Now, he’s promoting the Reebok Spartan Race, one of those cool obstacle races that have become so fashionable and such an important part of the CrossFit obsession and lifestyle.

To be honest, I am single and not getting any younger so I am going to go for it myself! Work on my inner studmuffin — the lad I used to be when I rowed in college. And I want you to do it too — and as an incentive, I would like to give the first person to comment who can commit to a race in Chicago, Virginia, Wisconsin, Philly, or Nebraska a free race code as a giveaway.  Here’s a short movie that gives you some insight into what the Spartan Race is all about:

Make sure you’ll be able to make the race. Here’s all the cool information about the Reebok Spartan Race, about the events, and just about anything else you’ll need.

Here’s the poop:

Spartan Race is on a mission to get you active, healthy, excited about change, and return to our ancient roots where running through woods, getting dirty, and facing adversity was part of everyday life. Our events are all about challenging today’s perception of normal.

Our events challenge the familiar, today’s perception of normal living and getting you out of your comfort zone! At Spartan Race, we do this everyday and it shapes everything we do.

Having experienced many different racing events, we wanted to make adventure racing more accessible to everyone, but do not be fooled by the word ‘accessible’, as our events have a challenge for everyone’s needs.

Spartan Race now introduces a level for everyone beginning with the entry level Spartan Sprint, intermediate level Super Spartan, the advanced Spartan Beast, and the ‘99.9% need not apply’ extreme level Death Race.

Whatever your level, Spartan Race will test your strength, stamina, and sense of humor.

Here’s a map of the upcoming races:

And here’s a reminder that 43 is not too old to run the Reebok Spartan Race:

(Via Biznology)

And by “nice guy” I mean you’re spending too much time worrying about what others think to the point of turning your entire social media marketing campaign into a milquetoast and pablum sandwich. You spend too much time trying to get everyone to like you.

You’re always afraid of stepping on toes or offending anyone. You’re especially afraid of getting fired. If you’re honest with yourself, that’s your biggest fear: losing your job if you’re an employee or losing (or alienating) your clients (or prospects) by doing something as revolutionary as having a voice, an opinion, an agenda, or a point-of-view.

Heaven forbid.

If you don’t have any champions…

You as a brand shouldn’t be a one-man-band. The online world is (and has always been) a conversation. The Internet is a collaboration. The social mediasphere is a two-way-street. And if you’re speaking to yourself alone in your social media room, you’re doing something wrong.

What are you doing wrong? Are you boring? Are you afraid? Are you insecure? Are you derivative? Do you create unique and compelling content or do you just repeat, retweet, and reshare the hard work of others? Are you a unique source or are you a repeater? Are you a soloist or just another face in the choir?

Cowboy up and audition for the solo!

Even better, why don’t you write your own music? Become a social media composer? Well, at the very least, learn how to project your voice to the back of the hall! Learn to use your diaphragm and get some volume.

Even if you have nothing to actually say, say it loudly and with confidence. Loud and proud always wins if you never leave the choir. Not everyone’s meant to become a soloist, a composer, or a conductor.

If you don’t have any enemies…

If you’re willing to compel the attention of the spotlight, you’re going to have critics. If you don’t, you’re not saying anything. You may not actually be dull but you’re being a dullard online. You’re not even being a dullard worthy of bullying or mocking, you’re being a Gray Man.

“A gray man?” you ask: “The gray man is someone who can walk through a crowd, be seen by everyone, but remembered by nobody because nothing about them stands out.”

The gray man is a concept taken from survivalism. The belief states that being invisible is better for survival than running around brandishing assault rifles and a big fancy 4X4. Cool, right?

Being a gray man may well be dandy for keeping alive in a post-apocalyptic deathscape, but being an invisible wallflower is antithetical to what you’re supposed to be doing on behalf of your brand, your company, your boss, your products, and your services.

Yes, I know you love social media because you’re naturally bookish, introverted, and a little anti-social (which is why you’re so good at social) but you’re now in content marketing, social media marketing, and digital marketing — and marketing is a subset of selling and sales requires that you beat the band, get out there, and break through the chaff, the ack ack — that you’re able to go from your librarian’s whisper to Whitman’s “barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world!”

Repeat after me: “Yawp!” Ok, once again, “YAWP!” Much better.

If at least a few people a month don’t even care enough to slag, slander, hate on, or flame you enough to make you a little nervous, then you’re not yawping very well, you’re not being authentic enough.

The reason why everyone hates a nice guy is because the nice guy is often kind of a jerk. He spends so much time doing things he hopes and prays you’ll find appealing that he’s essentially a liar.

He’s a liar because he’s fine being “just friends” even though he’s in love with you; he’s inauthentic because he’s not being himself and he’s got one hell of an unfulfilled agenda that moves further and further away; and the nice guy’s even dangerous because the rift between what he wants and who he is and how he’s acting, behaving, and being is infused with frustration and disappointment — and that can be volatile.

People really do want to know you better — stop being such a bifurcated putz.

If nobody unfollows you…

We keep on talking about acquiring followers, Likes, friends, and fans. We’re obsessed with it. We’re also super-afraid of being unfollowed. If you’re never being unfollowed, unliked, bozo-filtered, banned, blacklisted, spam-boxed, or tarred-and-feathered, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. I don’t mean you need to bash people over the head — you can win with charm, playfulness, smarts, humor, entertainment, or even je ne sais quoi.

But one thing you need to do is maybe message a little more than you do. Or choose a side. Or have an opinion that is a little more controversial and risky than glib beauty pageant aspirations for world peace.

(Ok, I thought I should mention just about now that I am being a little extreme.)

I want you to increase your volume: frequency-of-tweets, boldness of voice, directness-of-intent, and something even scarier and more intimidating: what do you want from your followers? What do you need from them?

How would you like them to help you?

In a perfect world where you actually got your heart’s intent, what would all your social media profiles, handles, Walls, channels, etc., be doing for you? Would they be adding bottom line to your revenue? Would they result in more donations to your cause? Would they be buying, buying, buying from your awesome eCommerce site?

Remember this: you’re allowed to give your followers a big kiss on the lips! They’ve already admitting to having a crush on you. Come on!

There’s no reason in God’s green earth why they would be following, liking, and subscribing to you otherwise, right? You’re not going to lean over, your eyes closed, and get a cheek. Come on, you’re already an item!

And really, the only reason why anyone would unfollow you is because they just don’t think that this is the right relationship. That this match wasn’t made in heaven and they’re going to look some more. It’s not you, it’s me; it’s not me, it’s you — whatever.

Churn’s a good thing. I mean it. If your followership is stagnant, it’s because so are you.

So, you’re really not even risking anything, are you? If they’re already into you, you can come from a place of power, of leadership, and of control — but in a good, supportive way.

You don’t need to fear rejection because your friends, followers, and subscribers have already made the first move.

Yes, I know that doesn’t make it any easier, but you’ll never make it around all the bases and get a home run if you don’t start with a first kiss. (Ok, that analogy has more than played out — I can just hear all of the unfollows, dislikes, unsubscribes that I am getting right now as we spiel.)

But, at the end of the day, the reason why everyone likes bad boys is because they take what they want, they speak their mind, they don’t apologize, and they stand their ground!

While I don’t necessarily recommend that much aggression be dumped into your social media platforms, I do agree with one thing: the stereotypical bad boy certainly gets what he wants because he knows what he wants and he lets people know in a very clear, easy-to-parse and easy-to-understand way.

Even though he may well be bad, he’s not duplicitous and you never (ever) need to read his mind to know what he’s after. He’s willing to raise his voice and become the center of attention — he’s even willing to make a scene when there’s no other choice — and so should you.

Never has the mediasphere been more noisy, competitive, or easy-to-access in the history of mankind — you’re going to need to be willing to shamelessly and fearlessly draw some attention to yourself to draw attention to your brand or corporate mission.

Good luck, knight — I wish you good luck on your quest.

Via Biznology blog.

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I took Gerris, my 2002 XR650L dual-purpose “dirt bike” and she was a lot of fun. Now that I have accrued some serious hours in the saddle, the hours at 70-80mph on VA 66W to I-81S was fine and not exhausting. I plugged in to music using my last set of Etymotic ER6i headphones and jammed. She was happy to arrive at Shrine Mont in Orkney Springs, Virginia, and into the woods where she belongs.

It was a church retreat so you’ll see an actual Bible right behind the gas tank. Here’s my set-up for the travels — on the back I have Wolfman Beta Plus Rear Bag strapped on — and it works great, though in this photo I had it way too close.

On the way back I put it all the way back and it propped right up on the turning signals — so it was better. On the seat I have a fabric seat top with a pocket on either side called Sweet Cheeks:

Sweet Cheeks is a temporary support device for Dual Sport riders wanting added comfort on the way to the trail. A simple, yet effective design. Sweet Cheeks is a seat cover that utilizes 2 liter soft drink bottles for added support; it widens the seat area and supports your upper thighs. Our support system offers you needed comfort, while folding small for easy transport. Easily replenished for the ride home.

I bought the seat-based fuel bottle holder from advice over on the Adventure Rider forum. It was my first time out on it and it was seriously awesome! It took the pressure off of my butt from the very narrow XR seat and made a 3 hour tour at highway speeds easy (on me if not the bike).

In addition to making the ride super smooth and sweet for my cheeks, I keep two MSR fuel bottle wrapped in chopped-up yoga mat and it’s nice, though a little awkward. It’s funny to watch me mount the bike with both the tail bag and the bottles on.

And then the real reward: I didn’t return via 263 to 11 to I-81 to 66 but took 263 to 11 to 211 and then ended up on the North section of Skyline Drive, around 33.5 miles of twisties and beauty and scenic overlooks. It was lovely and I need to spend more time in Shenandoah. And, I have video to prove it:

It was a church retreat so you’ll see an actual Bible right behind the gas tank.  It was all to attend a weekend church retreat with members of my parish, Trinity Episcopal Church, in Arlington, Virginia. Shrine Mont is an amazing retreat space. I popped from my cabin to the classroom and the rest of the grounds on my bike (should have hiked and walked, I guess, there was a lot of rich food there) and realized that my moto has a dedicated Bible-holder:

Here are some photos from the retreat — enjoy!  Here’s my parish family en masse and posing — well, not everyone, but everyone I really know from church, anyway — it’s a pretty sizable group and a bunch of very cool people.

Here’s the Shrine:

Here’s the view from my favorite chair, where I got some Spring sun and read The World According to Garp (such an awesome book as well as an amazing movie)

Here I am basking, pre-sunburn.

Here’s the main hotel, Virginia House, which is also where the bookstore is, where I bought Garp for $1, and where we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Here’s the Shrine at night — we celebrated Compline here.

It was amazing. This is my second year, so starting next year, it’ll be a tradition. Here’s my set-up for the travels — on the back I have Wolfman Beta Plus Rear Bag strapped on — and it works great, though in this photo I had it way too close.

And here you’ll see how I made it there: I printed out Google Maps turn-by-turn and then binder-clipped it to my Cee Bailey’s commuter windshield. Semi-old school until I mount and wire a GPS or my iPhone.

And then the real reward: I didn’t return via 263 to 11 to I-81 to 66 but took 263 to 11 to 211 and then ended up on the North section of Skyline Drive, around 33.5 miles of twisties and beauty and scenic overlooks. It was lovely and I need to spend more time in Shenandoah. And, I have video to prove it:

Spoiler alert: the Internet is mostly global with a default lingua franca of American English. Not only can that creeper from work look too deeply into your holiday in Aruba last week (or 7 years ago when you were in high school) but so can all the creepers in your village, city, state, continent, as well as any country that has open access to the free Internet and an interest in you, for whatever reason.

Please believe me when I say that even people with noble aims feel like creepers when you’re not used to it, especially when that person hails from well outside of your personal sphere of influence — and maybe someplace exotic with English as a second language.

Okay, if you’ve gotten this far, you passed my test for Jingoism. If you’ve the stomach and the stones to accept creepers and foreigners gladly, then I can speak openly with you, between us girls. I am assuming you’re pretty good at trivia, can find our past wars on a globe, and maybe studied abroad or went backpacking or for a stout walk-about.

Good. We’re on the same page. Let’s continue.

Point one: The Internet itself is a culture we all have in common, and there is indeed an online culture all its own.

If you’re traveling the world and run into folks anywhere abraod who have access to the Internet, there’s a pretty good likelihood that you’ll already have kittens, Facebook, and Google in common.

You’ll be able to talk spam and hackers and phishing and Twitter — or the local variant. While you may not know much at all about Orkut, Weibo, or Yandex, you’ll both know about creeping, running into old lovers, page-loading times, malware, and even things like iPhones, Blackberries, and Android.

And, since we’re all fellow-human beings and not all radicalized terrorists, this is always a great way to break the ice: things in common.

And, while those things in common used to be limited to episodes of Baywatch, you’ll now probably have YouTube, Facebook, reddit, and Buzzfeed in common, too. But don’t allow yourself to be wooed into a false sense of security.

At this point, the world is your oyster, right? Because the entire world knows about your world and is willing to write to you in pretty brilliant English all about it. It’s like love-at-first sight: wow!

However, they say that, aside from money-problems, it’s a lack of common heritage, culture, religion, language, and history.

How deep is your love? I really need to learn, ’cause were living in a world of fools, breaking us down, when they all should let us be … okay, sorry about that, I had a Bee Gees moment. But, it’s pretty novel early on; however, if you’re interested in taking it further, putting down roots, or doing any business — or you’re perceived as taking more than you give or just outstay your welcome — then your new friends will grow tired of you and you need to become more willing to meet your new Internet penpals more than halfway.

Point two: while most sophisticated Internet users know English, they’ll always be more receptive to their own tongue

I lived in Berlin for a while. When I first arrived, everyone spoke English — everyone. All the time.

I was novel, amusing, and even entertaining. After about 18-months (and it would have been more like 3-6-months were I not so bloody entertaining), people grew tired of keeping up appearances.

People started to “forget” to invite me to dinner parties because nobody wants to enforce an English-only dinner party when everyone’s native German and drinking a lot of good wine while relaxing with friends.

While I learned a lot about the culture of Germany and the culture of Berlin during that year-and-a-half, I lacked the biggest missing piece: I lacked German. Even more, I lacked native German — in fact, I lacked the German of Berlin itself, and the German of a certain cross-section and class.

We know it’s true: we readily identify (and often judge) each other based on regional dialects and accents. Southerners, folks from Pittsburgh, California “dude,” the nasal twang of “you betcha” Minnesota. In German, the same thing is true: Ossis (Easties) versus Wessis (Westies); Northern Germans versus Bavarians; and, of course, modern slang and pronunciations versus the harder German tongue sometimes still maintained from long ago now.

The Internet, when you dig down, is very provincial. Not in a jingoistic sort of way but more of a Shibboleth sort of way:

“A shibboleth is a word, sound, or custom that a person unfamiliar with its significance may not pronounce or perform correctly relative to those who are familiar with it. It is used to identify foreigners or those who do not belong to a particular class or group of people. It also refers to features of language, and particularly to a word or phrase whose pronunciation identifies a speaker as belonging to a particular group.”

But this sort of thing isn’t conspiratorial or even malicious but it generally results in the universal response of “you ain’t from around here, pardner.”

Point three: the language, region and country of online denizens do not necessarily reflect their culture.

Thanks to international trade and cheap access to commercial airlines, we’re a cultural moveable feast. Just in DC, you’ll go to places that are Cowboys bars full of Texans and bars where Michiganders collect densely and passionately outside of their own hometowns. The same goes for immigrants. Self-organized and oftentimes ad hoc communities that are alien to and unlike the dominant culture.

For example, if you’re marketing online in the US and you’re focused on the Spanish-speaking market, are you interested in Salvadorians? Mexicans, Dominicans, Colombians, Guatemans — you see what I mean? Folks from Canada remain Canadian but folks from Central and South America as well as the Caribbean tend to be lumped into Hispanic and Chicano and Latino, which is based only on Spanish-speaking, if I’m being generous.

But because most messaging to Spanish-speakers tends to appeal to the lowest common denominator, the message might come across as tone-deaf to the majority of the people it reaches. Because even outside of each home country, even in the melting pot known as the USA, we’re all tribal, feeling filial respect towards our own ethnicity and national origin — and often for generations if not thousands of years.

And then there are two more points: there really is a digital divide. Both a cultural and a financial one. Not everyone with money, believe it or not, prioritize being online. There are indeed many other things to spend money on than computers, mobile devices, smart phones, bandwidth, and Internet access — it’s not simply and only a digital divide based on poverty or illiteracy.

Seriously. I promise you.

Point four: just because you know Spanish fluently doesn’t mean you’ll be understood or appreciated.

As I have shared above, just because you speak Spanish fluently doesn’t mean you have the skeleton key/passingkey to everyone’s hearts or minds. Knowing a language is awesome because it does mean that you can parse what’s going on in Spanish around you, but it’s no cultural panacea, though you do have two-out-of-three or four sorted out, right?

The shared culture of the Internet and the shared culture of a shared language.

However, it’s super-complicated when it comes to the Spanish-speaking world: everything everyone says in one country’s Spanish seams to mean something either sexually-explicit, morally-offensive, clueless, or naive in another’s Spanish — plus, everyone else’s Spanish comes across as either snobby or ignorant to every other Spanish-speaking nation — and it drills down all the way to regions and cities within countries as well — same thing I told you about Germany.

So, even if you were trained in Spanish at Middlebury College and then spent years in once city, there’s a chance that you’ll never quite acquire the same personal experiences, shared historical perspective, same TV shows you watched, what it was like to be in primary and secondary school, or the sort of deep-seated resentments to geographic neighbors — all the sort of amazing and intense “other stuff” that goes along with being local, being native, and being true blue.

Point five: always consider class, poverty, conflict, religion, history, and their take on wealth, capitalism, and your own country

And so it goes. I did this amazing blogger outreach campaign on behalf of an online ads company back in the day. The message was “come check out what two awesome entrepreneurs did with their company — now they’re successful men — and you’re welcome to interview them, in all their success, on your blog — let me know.” This pitch worked all over the US, where self-made men are worshiped and universally-admire; however, when we reached out to some bloggers in Central and South America, where being rich is associated with stealing from others (I got my bread from taking your bread away), this was a very unsuccessful angle-of-attack!

Ultimately, I needed to retune my message in order to appeal to the sense and sensibility of the folks I intended to appeal. In this case, I could pitch the company and I could pitch the partners but not as self-made millionaires but rather as brother bloggers. And, instead of offering an interview, I offered a conversation — a connection. That seemed to work. There was an expectation of equality, of fellowship, and of brotherhood.

It was one of the best learning moments I’ve had when it came down to internationalization and the unique nature of global neighborhoods and how the unique quirks, color, and tone of real places on the map on the face of the earth show through one way or another, sometimes it’s transparency and other times it’s translucent — either way, it matters.

Point six: when it doubt, hire someone who is as local as possible to where you’re messaging

Always hire a village-, city-, regional-native instead of a brilliantly-trained polyglot.
You can’t fake it. You can’t emulate it. Maybe you can manage it if you speak the lingua franca of your target market, but you won’t be able to maintain the relationship for very long. Worse yet, you might not be able to accurately or effectively, over time, be able to get the real-true pulse of your market. When it comes to delivering your message, always make sure your translator understands both the game as well as its “English” — knows the rules and when and how to break them. Understands both the official protocol that State teaches its diplomatic corps but you’ll also need to know its shadow as well. What people say isn’t always what they mean — and you’ll often get a different price, response, and menu if you’re obviously from “not around here.”

Why am I telling this all to you? Well, because I don’t know how deeply or how carefully people think this all through. People tend to commoditize markets a little too completely; and, it’s even more prevalent when you have the sort of anonymous, unrestrained, unfettered and untaxed access to just about anyone and anywhere and I daresay maybe folks aren’t nearly careful, gentle, or attentive enough to expectations in customization, localization, and culturalization.

At best, you’ll be ignored; at worst, you’ll be tarred and feathered and drummed out of the corps.

What do you think? What are your experiences? Am I barking up the right tree?

(Originally published on the Huffington Post)

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I mean, really excited! It’s very charming.

But please forgive me, I felt the same way too — and I must tell you that I really needed the reminder. I mean, not to brag, but I have been 500+ on LinkedIn since before many of you were born. And with 43,571 followers on Twitter and 4,777 friends on Facebook, maybe I am “that guy.”

And with such a torrent of conversation splashing and sloshing at me all the time, manifesting in an endless din, I of course am just about always overwhelmed.

It’s almost impossible to both maintain the cultivated intimacy of those very first days of exploration when you knew the name of everyone you followed and, especially, everyone who followed you.

And, in order for your good words, your good message, your brilliance and genius to make its mark is to have built an audience.

There’s the rub. If you’re unable to remember that each thousand followers you accumulate will widen the gap between you and your followers. While your followers and friends will probably may not lose their attachment to you — in fact, their attachment might grow as they spend more time with your voice, your words, your wit, and your wisdom, you’ll get overwhelmed, too — just like I did.

Just remember, people don’t like being collected.

Honestly, I don’t know if I have done a very good job of it myself. I have tried to create Twitter lists and keep connected, but it’s not easy. It’s also not easy when people, over time, know you more than you can know them — even on Facebook.

Always remember, people don’t like being collected.

Do your best to not allow your burgeoning social media empire to go on autopilot. While it’s virtually impossible to keep up with so many people (unless you keep the number of people you follow to a severe minimum or limit your engagement with people you don’t personally know on Facebook to just followers and not friends), that doesn’t mean you can’t keep up with any of them.

At the very minimum, you’ll need to pay attention. You’ll need to listen. You’ll need to participate with everyone, at the very least.

At-replies (@replies), direct messages (DMs), and third-party mentions. At the very least. And you need to engage with generosity of spirit and patience. You’ll need to engage with everyone who engages with you with as much personal touch and attention as you would someone you already know — with the understanding that you’re only being damned with your success.

That were it not for your success building your brand and reputation online, you wouldn’t have this problem, would you?

There’s an amazing book by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird. It’s a book about writing that suggests that no matter how overwhelming the Herculean task before you — the overwhelming wall of tasks that keeps you from writing that great American novel — you can reduce it to simple steps. In the case of the book, a ten-year-old boy was freaking out about a book report about birds:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Bird-by-bird, follower-by-follower, friend-by-friend.

People don’t like being collected but people hate being dismissed.

The beautiful secret about being present, being well-engaged with your followership as you develop the sort of followership that extends into the thousands and tens of thousands — hundreds of thousands, potentially — is that, outside of private messages, engaging openly, honestly, presently, and sincerely with people publicly and before others is an outstanding way of shaking hands and kissing babies while the cameras are on.

However, that’s just a parlor trick. It’s a way of expanding and deepening perceived intimacy online, a way of spending quality time with one person publicly so as to show humor, humility, kindness, and attention to everyone else — sort of like how CEOs like to profess how the door to their office is always open.

What happens, then, when people your work with take you up on your offer to come visit them in the corner office?

Well, you sit there and thank God that you’re trusted and respected enough by each and every one of your employees that they’re actually willing to take you up on it (because, generally-speaking, the sort of CEO who does something like this is the sort of CEO who is pretty sure that his minions are too intimidated to ever cast a shadow on his door).

But you, you’re different.

Because you know, now or even before, that people don’t like being collected, people hate being dismissed, and people resent being trifled with, you’ll make a business of engaging pleasantly with everyone who comes to your door, no matter how casual the encounter, no matter how modest their pedigree, or no matter how non-existent their Klout.

Remember, every day, that you don’t have to do any of this. You need to neither collect thousands of people nor do you need to maintain a simple cadre of real people you’ve met in real life. It depends on what you want. Do you want access and influence or do you want relationship, intimacy?

Either way, it doesn’t matter. People aren’t stupid. If you’re rocking forty-plus-thousand followers like me or 38,356,230 like Justin Bieber, people know that.

They understand you’re busy. They know you’re probably torn in two by your schedule. That said, remember that this relationship must be a relationship of mutual respect: do you thank people for their retweets? For being mentioned in a #FollowFriday?

Are you responsive enough to take the time to brandish your virtual Sharpie to sign autographs? To smile sweetly as you’re immortalized in a virtual mugshot-with-a-star.

You don’t need to engage every day with every one of your 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 100,000 followers: remember, bird by bird, friend by friend.

Via Biznology.

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• Birds & Flowers (proflowers.com)
• Bird Chalet (baguetsnapshots.wordpress.com)
• Blue Bird (happylittlehedgehog.wordpress.com)
• Bird House (happylittlehedgehog.wordpress.com)

I have always called this long-tail blogger outreach (though I would love your help with choosing a new name for it) because it focuses on the B-Z-list bloggers, the online influencers who are often overlooked by most social media teams at digital agencies.

While I agree that the top-25-50 bloggers do deserve deep, long-term, and personal engagement, spending that sort of time, over time, on “everyone else” would take all the time in the universe. So, what my team and I developed is the equivalent of blogger-brand speed dating. According to Wikipedia:

“Speed dating is a formalized matchmaking process or dating system whose purpose is to encourage people to meet a large number of new people” . . . “Men and women are rotated to meet each other over a series of short “dates” usually lasting from 3 to 8 minutes depending on the organization running the event. At the end of each interval, the organizer rings a bell, clinks a glass, or blows a whistle to signal the participants to move on to the next date. At the end of the event participants submit to the organizers a list of who they would like to provide their contact information to. If there is a match, contact information is forwarded to both parties. Contact information cannot be traded during the initial meeting, in order to reduce pressure to accept or reject a suitor to his or her face.”

After collecting between 2,000-4,000 blogs that are topically-, geographically-, or demographically-appropriate, preparing a content-laden microsite and penning a very short-and-sweet email message pitch, then I send out those 2K-4K emails, each and every one a speed-date, and wait, real-time, at the Inbox.

Before long, hundreds of email replies stream in. Some aren’t interested, some are game, and others are curious but need more information. Like speed-dating, we’re not interested in the no’s but we’re interested in the yes’s.

Of course we’re courteous and we’re present and we’re always kind — “hugs not horns” I always remind my team — and we’re never anything but earnest and polite — “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” — but if they’re not interested, we don’t contact them again. And if they’re very unhappy, we’ll beg their pardon and put them into a Do Not Contact list; otherwise, everyone who replies is taken off the campaign list.

The secret sauce, however, is that this form of speed dating requires email — and email is unreliable. And people are suspicious and busy. And email sometimes doesn’t quite make its way to the Inbox.

So, a week after the initial email outreach, I send a reminder email, but only to those bloggers who didn’t reply at all. No reply results in a follow-up email.

And it works. Too many practitioners of blogger outreach, email marketing, email outreaches, or even triple-, double-, and single-opt-in mailing lists are just too shy, too feeble in their messaging, for fear that they’ll get hundreds or thousands drinks-in-the-face. Nope, not if you do it right.

If you do it right, you’ll get twice the response you did from your first email. So, for instance, let’s say we emailed 4,000 bloggers and a 1,000 bloggers responded. 250 would have responded to the first email outreach, 500 would have responded to the second outreach, and then 250 would have responded to the final outreach.

Yes, a week after we mail the first follow-up email, we send out a final follow-up and thank you, thanking the blogger (who has yet to email us or reply at all — pretty much radio-silent) for his or her time, for the inconvenience, and also to let the blogger know that he or she is welcome to take advantage of the opportunity when and if he or she gets around to reading and responding to the campaign pitch.

Our rule is to always be friendly, loving, generous, happy, kind, and even respectfully playful with each and every blogger, even the Grumpy Cats. Never rise to the bait, never fight fire with fire, never engage in snark/irony/sarcasm because the only person who is allowed to be anything but completely charming and gracious is the blogger.

Again, “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” — our corporate mantra.

And you know what? If we do everything right, we’ll generally earn a couple-hundred earned media mentions directly shared on the bloggers’ blogs, we’ll also earn secondary mentions through Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, digg, and even, if we’re lucky, reddit.

If you want to learn more, feel free to take a look at this blogger outreach deck I created for my friends at Sage over on Slideshare.

And here are some links to additional posts I have made about blogger outreach in the past:

• Chris Abraham on Pitching Bloggers
• The Quantum Mechanics of Blogger Outreach
• Be a Big Fish in the Blogger Outreach Pond
• Long-Tail Blogger Outreach Campaign Execution
• The Long Tail of Blogger Outreach
• The bloggers are the victims of bad blogger outreach
• Blogger outreach is earned media not paid, right?
• Real bloggers and real blogs always trump Robot Armies
• Real Americans don’t care much about A-list blogs
• Do you appreciate your blogger network?
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch
• The Long Tail strategy for AdWords works for blogger outreach

Blogger outreach and engagement is much more than social media. It could be seen as content marketing, yes, but it could and should be a communications strategy toward discovering and prospecting new and future influencers.

If you can identify a passion player, someone who is already talking about you, your products and services, or products and services you, too, offer, and you can woo them into becoming citizen brand ambassadors, and if you are their “first kiss,” then you’ll be able to develop a very large pack of proponents and passion-players who will be loyal and will have safely imprinted on your attention, your acknowledgement, and your generosity. To be sure, it’s much easier to prospect for new fans when these fans haven’t been wooed by another than it is to woo them away from a secure brand-attachment.

And, to be honest, every single blogger anywhere close to the top-50 has already been spoken for in a big way; and, generally-speaking, their brand sugardaddies probably have deeper-pockets and are internationally more prestigious that you may well be — so it behooves you to play blogger moneyball: find a large number of very talented bloggers who can personally assist you in your branding goals and bottom-line rather than spending your time and money on a few outrageously-compensated stars, most of whom are too busy and too distracted by an embarrassment of riches to actually give you all the time, attention, and coverage that you, your brand, your products, and your services deserve.

And remember, if you do all of this right, it’ll all be an earned media campaign, meaning you won’t have to pay each and every one of these bloggers to post, to cover, to review, or to promote. That’s not to say this’ll all be free to you — all of this can be expensive, both in terms of client service agency hours as well as in terms of the give, the gift, you pitch the blogger with, be it informational, a product, or a service. And you need to make it good. Unless it’s an offer that can’t be refused — give ’til it hurts — and you just expect a blogger to blog about you “just because” then you’ll always be disappointed.

As you can tell from my mantra, the blogger is always right. I have had clients get all diva about drop shipping the number of review copies of products in the past, telling me that they’ll go bankrupt because they’d need to drop ship 200 books or 39 pairs of glasses, asking me to pick and choose which of the bloggers should receive the gift. It doesn’t work that way. The bloggers have all the leverage. If you don’t make good on your generous offer, each and every blogger has recourse — and we knew they did — and it’s their blog! And their tweets and Facebook posts and their Tumblr and Pinterest and reddit and everywhere else.

But that never happens. Give ’til it hurts, understanding that better I do my job and the better and more generous my pitch is, the more bloggers will want to engage, thereby resulting in possibly hundreds and hundreds of requests, based on an outreach of 4,000 blogs — it’s only math. I would hate to hit the jackpot on behalf of a client only to find out that I have “bankrupted” them with my success success (and the client is never bankrupt, the client is generally just cheap with a tendency to exaggerate, though this had only happened a couple times in the last 7 years).

So, long-tail blogger outreach is an amazing platform to both discover and engage with a multitude of natural allies and the people who are already talking about you, and giving them all the tools, the copy, the content, the gifts, and the impetus to share stuff about you, as earned media mentions, in very short-order, all over the Internet (an entire campaign only takes around six-weeks, total). It also allows you to harvest all of the bloggers game enough to mention you and your goodies into your inner-most, inner-most, your sanctum sanctorum, where you can personally grow your relationship with them now and groom them into the future — build up your own Guy Kawasaki, Om Malik, and Robert Scoble prospected and recruited and from the bush leagues or from “high school.”

I didn’t expect this post to be so long, but I guess I had a lot to share. Do you consider what I am doing with blogger outreach to be “social media?” What do you think about the discipline? The theory of “everyone”? The concept of flirting with bloggers en masse and engaging with them in a very quick “yes/no” speed-dating scenario? Do you think it is worthwhile to reach out to thousands of bloggers — all the way down to “nobody” — instead or in addition to the top blogger celebrities? Let me know what you think in the comments. I am very curious as to what you think and would love to tweak my methods, evolving it over time. Thanks in advance!

Via Biznology

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You don’t have to be outrageous to kiss your shame on the lips — you can surely be the talk of the dinner party without showing up drunk and creating a scene — you just need to be a little more honest, a little more forthcoming, and a lot more human than you’ve probably been commanded by too many broadcast journalism classes, by too many media training courses, or simply by your very own concept of self, decorum, and shyness.

Think of all of the amusing — saucy even — stories you could tell at a dinner party, even if your mum, dad, Priest, Rabbi, boss, inlaws, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, and even kids were in attendance — if you had the courage!

The reason why you come off as so tone-deaf online might even be because you aren’t much of an exhibitionist at all! Maybe “I can’t say that” is more of an excuse you use so that you don’t have to become the center of attention in the fist place. Maybe you’re too shy for this? Maybe you’re not the sort of person who would even get up at a dinner party with all of your family and friends to even tell a story in such a public, out there, sort of way.

I mean, if I’m being honest, online people want to see you in your knickers humping a giant stuffed bear as much as you want to do it yourself. This has been proven again and again by the hundred of Harlem Shake videos published by just about every company — and not just the Playboy Mansion and a bunch of college kids.

Sadly, since there were so many Harlem Shake videos, only the really raunchy, sexy, bombastic videos ever made the light of day (very smart, you introverted social media manager — you were able to hide in plain sight!)

Nothing you will do in your blog posts will ever be as humpy or as nast or as raunchy as all the people in your office have already possibly been when they clicked upload and your Harlem Shake video went live and possibly went quasi-viral. Be honest, you’ve probably kissed shame on the lips at a few holiday parties in your time — don’t worry, what I am suggesting is really up to you.

If it helps you out at all, consider all of this to be part of your job; if it helps you out at all, workshop some of the scenarios you’re considering and pass them by the most creative people in your office. Explain to them what you’re up to and let them know that they shouldn’t be surprised when the walls shake, the coffee flies, and you break some sound on behalf of the company and brand.

First caveat, however: do not script it, do not read it, do not practice it, and do not make it perfect. People hate reluctant roleplay — it’s no fun if it’s forced!

Ask TMZ: there’s only one thing more shameful than a sex tape popping up: a sex tape that was produced for publicity reasons.

No, I am not suggesting a sex tape, but I am suggesting getting as close to your shame as possible, making it close enough to make you a little nervous — maybe a lot nervous. If you’re not challenging yourself as much as you do when you prepare and perform a public speech, I think you may well be calling it in.

Why in the world was I inspired to write such a post? Well, I reconnected with Jason Konopinski at SXSW and started to listen to his podcast, Riffing on Writing. His latest episode features Julien Smith and this blog post is going to be completely derivative.

This entire post was a riff on something Julien said — and something I think I need to remind myself of today: “people don’t get close enough to their line when they write.” While that may not be a direct quote, it’s what I heard and this is what I made of it:

You may well have a line when it comes to what you will and won’t say on social media, on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, et al — and that line might really and truly be right on the edge of propriety, too!

However, I bet you’ve never even remotely come close to your very own line — and that’s indeed safe but it doesn’t help when it comes to making a name for yourself or standing out from the crowd, especially — and this is another paraphrase from Riffing on Writing from Julien — since we’re currently living through the most competitive media age in history.

Strangely enough, I am now listening to The Engaging Brand podcast with Anna Farmery and her guests Stephen Voltz & Fritz Grobe — gurus in the art of creating viral videos — and they’re echoing what Julien and Jason talked about except in this case they’re talking about what makes a viral video hot: and it’s not narrative, it’s not story, it’s not inner-most-innermost, it’s more side show, dunk tank, shot in the groin!

OK, now that we know what the people want, they also echoed what I said earlier on, too, which is: you need to be honestly bombastic, you need to be earnest about that groin shot — you need to make sure that all the viewers of America’s Funniest Home Video don’t call bullshit on your doggie video unless there’s a very big wink and a large nod.

When it comes to embracing our own personal Idiocracy, we don’t want to feel like we’re being spoken down to, for goodness’ sake, we want to feel like we’re all on the same level — that we’re sharing a bit of a giggle, a bit of a blush, together. That, as we laugh and our shoulders relax and we let some of our daily stress disperse into the Interwebs, we also click Share To: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Reddit, Digg, Vine, StumbleUpon, Tumblr and everywhere else.

Final caveat: please go as far as your line in the sand — but no further. For most companies I have seen on YouTube doing the Harlem Shake, I don’t even know where that line is anymore. Even if your line is very out there, make sure you have your boss and legal define a line for you — and stick behind it; also, consider the family friendliness of your content, too. If Bob Saget wouldn’t show it on AFV then you might have gone too far.

You really don’t want to get flagged as family unfriendly. Think about your content as a submission to StumbleUpon, “Is this page safe for work? [Yes] [No, it contains nudity or adult content]” — try to avoid nudity or adult content. Remember, America was founded by prudes. Violence is OK, sexual content is not.

Good luck and I want you to know that no matter how bold you are, no matter how brave you fancy yourself after all of this, you’ll still get nowhere close to your real line — unless you’re a sociopath or Louis CK — so don’t be too concerned.

Some bad news: you’ll soon realize you’ll become way more popular online if you get and keep super close to your line of shame than you will ever get from being smart, being a good writer, or having actually original insight. I am sorry but it’s true. You’re already an amazing writer, right? Imaging the new heights you’ll reach if you come out from the shadows, come in from the cold, and allow your freak flag to fly!

Let me know how it goes.

Via Biznology

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Mark your calendars – May 2, 2013 – 6pm to 9:30pm — there’s still time to buy your tickets for 100 Bowls of Compassion — and here’s the amazing menu — there’s a Nordic theme and it will be elegant, amazing, delicious, dashing, smashing, amazing, and wonderful! And, if you’re not ready to commit to a ticket or a table, then you can surely commit to a herring in our Adopt a Herring program.  Now, here’s the menu — read it and weep, especially if you’re Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, or just love Ikea food done properly. And, Miriam’s Kitchen only has a 10% overhead so 90% of all the money raised will go to ending homelessness in DC and feeding the homeless men and women of Washington, DC. Here you go:

Bar

• Aquavit, Cointreau and Lingonberry Cordial with Lime Juice
• Spicy Pickled Vegetables with Kale Wrap

Seafood

• Gravlax Cured Char, served on a blini with dill crème fraiche
• Pepper Cured and Smoked Local Striped Bass, served with pickled cucumber with caraway bread
• Seared Pacific Whitefish, served with boiled potatoes and a citrus-garlic glaze
• Pickled Herring in White Wine, with mustard sauce on bagel chip
• Egg Salad with Salmon Caviar, served on rye bread

Meats

• Aquavit Marinated Elk with Elderberry-Espresso Sauce, with potato-horseradish roesti and fried leeks
• Swedish Meatball Slider, served with lingonberry mayonnaise and sweet pickled carrot slaw
• Chicken Rillette and Duck Breast, with beets and birch syrup vinaigrette
• Wild Game Sausage, with cranberry mustarda

Vegetables

• Potato and Spring Vegetable Soup (vegan), with scallion pistou
• Toasted Barley Risotto (vegan option), with wild mushroom ragout
• Asparagus Quiche, with Vasterbotten cheese and micro greens
• Rhutabega and Green Apple Salad (vegan), with white wine-almond vinaigrette
• Spelt-Lentil Cake (vegan), with savory caramelized onion jam
• Roasted Root Vegetable Spread (vegan), pureed with lemon thyme and extra virgin olive oil

Desserts provided by volunteer pastry team led by Volunteer Pastry Chef Ann Brown.

100 Bowls of Compassion Celebrates Nordic Nights – Mark your calendars – May 2, 2013 – 6pm to 9:30pm

• Buy Tickets for Miriam’s Kitchen’s 100 Bowls of Compassion (chrisabraham.com)
• Miriam’s Kitchen welcomes homeless on snowy days (wjla.com)
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch (socialmedia.biz)
• Girl With The Dragon Tattoo; Pickled Herring sandwich (brytontaylor.com)
• New Block in the CWE lives up to its Webster original (stltoday.com)
• Michelin-Star Heaven Costs $650 for One at Oslo’s Maaemo – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
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• Royal Danish proudly presents NORDIC BIGSMOKE 2013 – a 48-hour marathon for cigar-lovers; join the cigar Vikings this Midsummer (prweb.com)
• 8 Best Vegetarian Restaurants in the U.S. (apartmentguide.com)
• Fresh house-made tofu and delicious sweet potato cake at Kyotofu NYC (notjustvegetarian.com)

I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in Europe. I have and while I recommend it as de rigeur as part of experiencing life, one of the downsides is called Eurovision. Why? Well, American liberal intellectuals tend to idealize all of Europe, from Vladivostok all the way to Rotterdam, and the orchestrated lather associated yearly with the Eurovision competition is shameless and humiliating for every member nation, whether they cop to it or not.  Well, the first and only Eurovision song that has ever made it to my attention after 43-years on earth while safely ensconced in the US of A comes from Dina Garipova in the form of What If.

What a beautiful song. Thanks for sharing it with me, Phil. What a message. A message that is almost too earnest and too honest for me to watch all the way through, and yet I did anyway. It’s an inspired song (and will probably be adored and mocked, both) and I like it. I hope you do, too. They’ve always said that we become more sentimental as we age, and that’s true; however, I am half Austro-Hungarian and half Irish so in many ways, sentimental is what I am — and also hopeful.

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