I not only don’t believe “personal” seeming tweets from a major company – because I assume it came from a machine. (Highly vetted and very professionally planned, no doubt, but it’s long since lost any real connection with a human at origin point.) I also live in fear of automating a tweet that:

Tick Tock Tick Tock ... Real Life Optional

a) gets mugged by real life events – a happy tweet that looks horribly tone-deaf and out of place because something truly tragic happened in real life, making you and your product look not only trivial but completely oblivious.

b) repeats the same message over and over with no regard for context – a sure way to annoy your core followers who may subscribed to all your communication channels

I realize this very hands-on approach doesn’t scale up for a major company like Acura. I have no idea what one does at that level – although, if you have the budget, doesn’t that also assume you have the people to stay on top of things so that your message doesn’t look like spam on the other end? But if you’re a small to medium-sized business? Take the extra time, customize your information, and convince your customers that a real person’s on the other end. It’s what’ll keep them coming back to you rather than going to the competitor. And I say that not as a communications professional, but a customer on the receiving end of pitches from people like me. 24/7.

What is Klouchebag? Why, it is the standard for asshattery! And apparently my score says that I’m a bit of a prat.

My Klouchebag Score

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m okay with the assessment because both “asshattery” and “prat” are favorite words. The former quite commonly used when I am around people with whom I am comfortable sharing invective but not quite comfortable dropping the f-bomb.

For those of you have no idea who the man is, Owyang is a highly regarded digital strategy and online media thinker.* And now that you do, don’t zone out, even if all you want from your social media is to connect with friends or check out the latest awesome grandkid pics. Because….

The gist of Owyang’s piece is that digital profiling is coming to an interaction near you, whether you’re ready or not. Now, this is hardly earth shattering news – pretty much everyone is now aware that you need to be aware of what your online social presence says about you, particularly if you’re job hunting. All those tweets and Facebook (not so public but easily shared/liked/viral) statuses where you were hungover, nasty about a public figure, or displayed bigotry. Yeah, all that forms a first impression of you, and informs your desirability as a candidate. Good luck if you were kidding and now sit in front of a search committee that doesn’t see the humor or share your politics.

Influential people in my networks score "low." Probably because they've kept some social media profiles unlinked. Hm.

But back to the queasies….Owyang’s point is that the profiling is now going to happen in ways even more intrusive, annoying, sobering (in how unimportant you are), and possibly outright insulting (“no, you’re not important, you don’t get this offer, ever!”) than we are currently, sometimes grudgingly, used to. And one of the examples that really struck me was the article on a marketing guy who lost out on a job because he had a low Klout score. Although, I’m thinking that perhaps the problem wasn’t low Klout score so much as the fact that he didn’t know what Klout was – even though he was in marketing.

Still, I don’t relish the idea of being told I don’t qualify because I score really low on an algorithm that may or may not fully tell the picture of who I am and what I can do. Especially if it’s all based on what I’ve chosen to share, or not. I think reducing people to a score, when not reductive and insulting, is simply unwise – regardless of industry. We’re people and one size does not fit all, and some things are not well measured in numbers and ratios, no matter how much very very smart people sweat the details of the algorithm. And no, I don’t think that because I think we’re so precious and special that we can’t be mathematized. We probably can – if you can account for every single unpredictability of the human race. That’s a tall order even for the staunchest machines, which ultimately go by math a person invented and implement somewhere down the line.

None of which means I shouldn’t know what a Klout is on the series of pneumatic tubes that is the Interwebs, or how influential it is whether or not I’m on it. Which goes to a larger point about the digital profiling: You can opt out of the digital world, you can pooh pooh it, find it annoying, trivial, and despise it all you want. But know that it’s increasingly part of the puzzle people use to figure us out at first blush. And if you’re not gonna play the game, have your talking points ready. Don’t be the guy who faltered because he didn’t know what the Klout score was. Be the guy who doesn’t care if he has a low score or doesn’t show up on a Google search, because you did your interview prep and you are more than what the web says you are.

* I flatly refuse to use the term “thought leader” on my own blog. 

"If you build it, he will come." If you don't recognize that line, you need to watch Field of Dreams. NOW.

I’m flattered and delighted to tell you that I’ve been published – twice! – on Razoo’s blog. Here are the links to the posts in which I work in references to Nora Roberts and Field of Dreams.

Please feel free to comment there, and enjoy!

• If you build it, they will come … maybe. 
• The synapse of QR codes.

Image from Splash Media University

I love your job. I’ve always loved writing and, as I’m entering my senior year of high school, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I should major in and where I plan on going with it. So let’s say, hypothetically, that I aspire to do what you do. I’m looking for direction. What I want to know is this: if you could do your college years over, knowing what it is you do now, how would you best use the time to prepare?

Here is what I wrote back …

I happened into this field entirely by accident and I’m not a trendcaster, so I can’t really tell you what there will be demand for, especially since everything changes so so fast! But I can tell you this, for anyone looking to do communications (and you notice I just say communications, not online or digital or multimedia, because there’s no difference now), the following experiences and abilities are key:

1) Learn to write. For the public, not just your professor. Your professors and a college education are invaluable, and you’ll get a very good grounding. But a class paper doesn’t always help you learn to write for a market, or persuasively for the public. And unless you’re the next Faulkner, chances are you’ll write for a job. Learn to write well! Learn technique, and craft.

To this I’d also add, take a basic journalism course – you’ll learn a ton about how to do the research, how to make your point, the difference between reporting and editorializing, and the value of a seriously well written lede. Journalism may be an embattled industry, but they’re still teaching journalism basics, which are invaluable in any industry. Because it’s all about being able to communicate effectively. No matter how complex the subject.

2) Learn basic web skills – they weren’t really key when I graduated, um X years ago – but they sure are now! You should, at minimum, know how to get into the back end of your blogging platform and fend for yourself when it comes to formatting your text, placing images, troubleshoot tech “urps.” It’ll make all the difference between putting up a wysiwyg blog on blogspot and running your own site with your own domain where you own your content and have a whole lot more flexibility.

This by the way, to be clear, is not the same as coding skills.  

3) Learn basic SEO/SEM – this is something professionals still specialize in, and there’s a reason why. It’s 24/7, very exhausting, and pretty soon, it’s something you want a professional to deal with for your business. But I think it would be valuable to take a basic course in SEO so you can learn how the web works, how data is framed and produced, why things go viral, and how things are easily shared so that your audience finds it easy to engage with you.

4) Start going to meet-ups and look for free conferences. The un-conferences are particularly good. Be a fly on the wall, listen to the established professionals do their thing as well as be challenged by up-and-comers. All for little to no money. You have to get to them, of course, but if you’re in a major metro, this shouldn’t be an issue. Eventbrite is a great place to look for conferences, seminars, and talks near you.

5) Learn basic business skills – many of us are already at a point where we are our own brands, bosses, and businesses because it beats waiting for a job in a perilous and unpredictable economy. But the problem is most of us did not think we’d have to be our own boss and have no idea what that entails. We know what it’s like to fill out the W-4 and take home a paycheck. We have no idea how to develop business and make payroll. That’s a whole other ball of wax. So take a business basics course, something that includes accounting, budgeting, cash flow, the basics of how to run a business. It’s unglamorous, but if you work for yourself, it may be years before you get to the level where the MBA is more necessary before basic everyday business sense.

6) Seek out content strategy courses. Because you can’t just set up a webpage anymore, regardless of your industry. You have to manage the content, keep it fresh, and always keep an eye on it. You are now your own Martha Stewart, and wholly responsible for the outcome.

7) Take a basic big data course. This didn’t exist at all when I was in school and it may still not. But look around and see who is teaching it, and see if you can audit a class. And what do I mean by big data? I mean all the information that the Googles of the world track and monetize. It’s what sets the terms of the marketing game for many industries, it’s how the conversation and communications ends up getting framed. Learn how big data works. It will be very very useful!

Create your own privacy. I have colleagues who think it’s ridiculous to even hold on to the fallacy that we have privacy. Perhaps that is true. But I cannot overemphasize that you should put nothing up there that you don’t want to see above the fold in the newspaper. Your tweets, your facebook updates, your photos and captions and email threads and blogposts. Jump in, but know that everything you put up there goes to create your electronic presence that is now standard to look at in a background check and job interview process. No, your employer can’t demand access to your pages and no you shouldn’t feel pressured to friend them – in fact, I would advise that you absolutely ignore such a request. But you bet they look at a lot more than your LinkedIn profile.

9) Get an internship where copy and content are both valued. And learn the difference between writing for pleasure, writing for a purpose, writing because you have something to say, writing because something needs to be said, and writing to sell. There might be overlap, but they are all very distinct things – great careers, reputations, and your employability rests on your knowing the difference. Reputation especially – I’ve learned the hard hard way to never put my name to something I wasn’t comfortable with. I was once asked to essentially write up an advertorial. I’ve done dozens since, but at the time that wasn’t what I expected I was supposed to do. I was younger, not yet able to be graceful in my objection, got boxed into a corner, and ended up having a byline to what was essentially a hideously biased puff piece. Years later, faced with the same situation, I flatly refused. And you know what? I remained employed, for another couple of years until I quit on my own terms. There will be editors, managers, buyers, advertisers, and bosses who will want you to change words in ways that don’t sit well with you. Listen to your voice and don’t back down. It’s your name. At the end of the day, it’s all you’ve got.

10) Start writing! It’s a muscle that gets better with time. As I said, there is no privacy on the web, so do think about that before you start. Because everything you put up there becomes part of the public profile that you’ll then use to market yourself for a job. And what you write at 18 may not be something you want to have recruiters see when you’re 35. But start writing. As Nora Roberts put it, “I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank page.” 

As I read through my response, I already see so much more that I could add. Plus things I may have actually been wrong about – for instance, I’m pretty sure big data courses have existed forever – just not in any form that would have appealed or seemed obvious to me in the English major section of school!

But I’d love to hear from you. If you’re a communications professional and social media is big part of your workload, what advice would you give Noelle? What do you know now that you wish you knew when you were starting out? Please do tell!