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My Favorite Moment from BlogIndiana 2010 Is Not What You Think

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

My favorite moment from BlogIndiana 2010 is not what you think? You might think it was the talk I gave on Saturday. But it wasn—okay, that was pretty awesome. It’s always an honor to speak there.

No, my favorite moment was when a few of us snuck out to lunch, and John Uhri (of the Sketch Notes) I introduced Jason Falls and Jay Baer to MacNiven’s, a Scottish restaurant in downtown Indianapolis.

MacNiven’s makes a pretty decent hamburger, but what’s unusual about it is that it’s 1/4 pound of beef, smashed to 8″ around. You have to fold it up to eat it. I explained it to Jay, and then Jay — having never practiced before, mind you — showed the rest of the world how to eat it. Now that is a quick study.

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.

Tags: hamburgers, Jason Falls, Jay Baer, John Uhri, networking
Posted in Networking, Social Media | View Comments

Not Every Social Media Consultant Knows What They’re Doing

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

I was tweeting with my friend and fellow social media consultant, Dana Nelson, a couple nights ago about a business presentation she was sitting in, when she quoted this piece of advice from the presenter.

“Posting your business on other business sites is lame – tagging business/ cross marketing does not work.”

Wait, what? Who said that, the business professor from Back to School?

Cross-posting doesn’t work? Creating visible partnerships is lame? Creating a referral network is ineffectual?

Look, there are a lot, a lot, a loooooooot of social media consultants out there. And they don’t all know what they’re talking about. It worries me that these people are spreading poor information out there. It’s like a volunteer sheriff’s deputy telling people you can’t be arrested for drunk driving if you’re wearing your seat belt. (Caution: You can be arrested for drunk driving, even if you are wearing your seat belt.)

And this 16-word piece of misinformation is a doozy, and so wrong in so many ways.

It’s a widely accepted fact in search engine optimization circles that promoting a business site on another site is going to give me some big search engine juice. Anyone who understands basic SEO knows that backlinks are what give your site a high search engine ranking.
Coke and McDonald’s would disagree with your views on cross-marketing. As would Pizza Hut and Pepsi. Or any movie studio with Happy Meal Toys and Burger King Kids’ Meal Toys. Or BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon. And any sponsors of any NASCAR or Indy Car racing team.
People buy from people they like, and accept recommendations from people they trust. If Dana recommends a good restaurant to visit, I’m going to believe her. Why? Because I like her and trust her. It’s the same with businesses. If a business I trust recommends the services of another business, I’m going to believe them. The smart thing for small businesses to do is to team up with allied businesses.
There are more business networking experts than there are social media experts (as hard as that is to believe). Nearly all of them will shout the praises of networking, referral sharing, and cross-promoting. And I’ll believe business networking experts who measure their experience in years and decades, not weeks and months.

This is just one of many reasons why you need to screen your so-called social media “expert” before you hire them. Especially if they blather on with inane bits of advice like this.

Tags: cross-promoting, networking, Rainmakers, referrals, small business, Social Media
Posted in Marketing, Networking, Reputation Management, Social Media | View Comments

5 Signs You Suck at Twitter

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

I’ve been playing around with Friend Or Follow over the last few days, and I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of people suck at Twitter.

Friend Or Follow is a Twitter tool that shows people you’re following, but aren’t following you; people who follow you, but you’re not following; and people you have a mutual followship with.

I dumped over 500 people from my Twitter account this week with FOF. I checked out each account I unfollowed, and frankly, some of you people are just doing it wrong. That’s why I unfollowed you. Not sure if this includes you? Then check out the…

Five signs you suck at Twitter.

You claim to be a social media consultant/pro/expert/guru (CPEG), but your following to follower ratio is 10:1. That is, you’re followed by 5,000 or more people, but only following 500. Social media consultants looove to say “have conversations with people.” But shouldn’t people who truly value conversation be willing to, I don’t know, have them?. Or at least fake like you are? If you’re a CPEG, you should have a ratio fairly close to 1:1. This is not to say that everyone should have a 1:1 ratio. Just the CPEGs. (Pro tip: you’ll also have more than 200 followers. I’m just sayin’.)
Nearly every one of your tweets is some motivational or inspirational message. Why do I need to get ten motivational messages peppered throughout the day? If it didn’t help me at 8:30 — 29 minutes after your HootSuite-scheduled “Good morning, my tweeps! Make this an excellent day!” — then it’s not going to help me at 9:30, 10:30, and so on. Don’t regurgitate someone else’s cleverness, show me yours. If you really want to motivate me, tell me about the cool stuff you’re doing.
You’re trying to amass as many followers as you can. If you’re a celebrity, a public figure, or someone who’s really, really interesting, that’s great. If you grew your network through hard work and earned those followers, more power to you. But if you resort to computer scripts, trickery, and joining follower-building networks to boost your rankings, then stick with being a LinkedIn LION. Twitter is not a competitive sport. Despite what you’re already doing to LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter isn’t just one more race to the bottom of mediocrity and uselessness.
Your Twitter bio has the words “money,” “fast,” and “make” in it. I spam-block every single person whose bio says they have some money making system they want to share with me. Stick to peddling penis drugs and fake watches by email.
Your time between tweets can be measured with a calendar. You don’t have to tweet many times a day, but at least once a day wouldn’t kill you. Even every other day would be fine. But when you’re only tweeting every 3 – 4 weeks on a regular basis, then Twitter isn’t a communication tool, it’s an afterthought, like calling your mom the day after Mother’s Day.

What is your Twitter pet peeve? What sort of annoying behavior have you seen?

Tags: facebook, linkedin, social networking, social networks, twitter
Posted in Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | View Comments

5 Photo & Video Sharing Sites Travel Destinations Should Use

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Yesterday, I talked about the 5 Reasons Why Travel & Tourism Destinations Need Social Media, and how social media is being used by more and more people than you may have realized.

Social media helps people share news about their lives with their friends and family. Not only are they telling people they went on vacation, they’re able to show them where they went, what they did, and all the good times they had. They’re especially doing it on the photo and video sharing sites. Here are fives sites you should use to promote your own travel and tourism destination.

YouTube (VIDEO)

What it is: This is the website everyone knows when it comes to video sharing. According to one source, there are 1,500 years worth of videos on YouTube right now. But that’s because they make it so easy.
Get started:Go to YouTube.com and set up your account. If you already have a Google account of some sort (Gmail, iGoogle, Google Docs), you already have an account, because Google owns YouTube. Start finding other friends and guests by importing your email address book. Then follow the instructions to upload your videos.
Strategy: Encourage guests to upload their own videos and tag your destination in it. (This helps you get found for any searches on YouTube.) Upload your own videos (regular or HD) and embed them in your blog or link to your Facebook account.

Vimeo (VIDEO)

What it is: Vimeo is another video sharing site that’s not nearly as big as YouTube. The benefit to you is that you get to be a bigger fish in a bigger pond. According to their website, it was originally “. . . created by filmmakers and video creators who wanted to share their creative work, along with intimate personal moments of their everyday life,” so there tends to be more of an artsy feel to it, but you’re not limited to only being a filmmaker or artist.
Get started: Go to Vimeo.com and set up an account. Import your email address book (Google or Yahoo), and make connections with your guests.
Strategy: Same as Facebook. If your guests use Vimeo, encourage them to upload videos and tag your destination in it. Upload your regular and HD videos, and then use the embed code to place them in your blog or link to your Facebook account.

Flickr

What it is: Flickr is one of the two most popular photo sharing sites. In fact, by strict definition, it’s a social network centered around photo sharing (actually, all the video and photo sharing tools are considered social networks). You upload your photos and share them with your friends, embed them in blog posts, and link to them in Twitter messages.(Note: Flickr has begun accepting 90 second videos for uploading. While they won’t give YouTube a run for their money, they are making it easier for Flickr fans to keep their video in one place too.)
Get started: If you already have a Yahoo account, you have a Flickr account. Otherwise, sign up, import your email address book, and then start uploading photos. If you have an iPhone or Android, you can also upload photos directly to Flickr from your phone. There is also a digital camera storage card called the Eye-Fi that will not only store your photos, but upload them whenever you’re in a wifi hotspot.
Strategy: Hold a best photo contest and encourage guests to upload the photos to Flickr and Picasa (next section), and then embed the photos in the comments section of your website or your Facebook page.. Post the entries to your website, and allow voting for the best photo (use SurveyMonkey.com). Use the best photo(s) on your promotional materials. Also, consider using a Creative Commons license with your photos (this lets other people use your photos as long as they give you credit), and let them use photos that link back to your Flickr page.

Picasa

What it is: Another photo sharing site, but this one is owned by Google. I like Picasa a little more because it’s easier to integrate with a Blogger blog, plus they have different paid subscription levels. You can get 20GB for $5, or 200GB for $50.
Get started: If you have a Gmail account or a YouTube account, you’re all set. Otherwise, go to picasaweb.google.com Next, go to Picasa.com and download the Photo Uploader. This will let you upload photos in batches, rather than a few at a time.
Strategy: First, don’t worry about whether you can upload videos to Picasa, because you can also use YouTube. (Remember, they’re both owned by Google.) Next, just like with Flickr, hold a photo contest, and use the best photos in your promotional material. And consider using a Creative Commons license with your Picasa photos.

Facebook

What it is: The biggest social network in the world. We talked about it previously.
Get started: Hopefully you already started a Facebook account, but if not, go to Facebook.com and start an account. Get comfortable with it and then start a business page (what they used to call a “Fan Page”) for your own business. Invite friends to “Like” your business page, and do it more than once (people need reminding).
Strategy: While this won’t be the hub of your social media campaign, it needs to be a major part of it. Facebook will have more of your guests and customers on it than any other social network. This is where you need to push a lot of your marketing message, which will drive people back to your main website or blog.

Where should you start?

While there is a chicken and egg question about whether you should join social networks first or start with photo and video sites, it ultimately doesn’t matter. It will take a few days to get everything ramped up. Focus on one video site and one photo site. Pick the one you like the best, and the one that is easiest to use, and just start using it.

At the same time, pick the social network you want to start on (I recommend Facebook, since that’s where everyone is), and work on that one as well. You’ll ultimately spend more time on Facebook than you will on your photo and video sites, so consider these sites as supporting sites for your social network.

Tags: facebook, Flickr, Picasa, social networking, social networks, Vimeo, youtube
Posted in Facebook, Lead Generation, Networking, Photo, Public Relations, Reputation Management, Social Media, Social Networks, Video | View Comments

5 Reasons Email Is NOT Going Away. I Don’t Care What Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Says

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Email is NOT going away.

South African blogger Arthur Charles Van Wyk thinks Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg is just a bit crazy when she says that email is going to die off, because only 11% of teens are using email these days. (You can watch the video below.)

Email is not obsolete. Not yet, anyway.

The premise is an interesting one: if you want to figure out what kind of consumer technology we’ll be using in several years, look at what the teens are using right now. And the teens aren’t using email, they’re using SMS on cell phones, or they’re using social networks like Facebook.

Does this mean that we will all write in text speak? Will sexting become an appropriate form of communication?

I don’t care what anyone says. Email is not, NOT NOT going to die off. Here are 5 reasons email is not going away:

Email is widely used in the business world. We’ve got so many companies using it, it’s never going to be dislodged, at least not in my lifetime. Until someone finds an easier way to transfer large documents and files only to specific individuals, it’s going to be the communication tool of choice. Can you see corporations — many of whom were reluctant to start letting people get email addresses and Internet access in the first place — dropping a tool that they fought against adopting? They’re still using fax machines, for God’s sake! So, sure teenagers aren’t using it now, but wait until they get assimilated into the corporate collective. They’ll be forced to use it whether they want to or not.
How do you get notified when you get a new friend, get tagged in a photo, have someone comment on your status update? Right now it’s by email. Do you really want your phone to buzz every time someone wants to be your Farmville friend on Facebook, or responds to someone else’s status update? While everyone likes their mobile phones, getting buzzed by an abundance of social network messages is going to get tiresome.
Our mobile phones can only hold so many texts. I have emails from 5 years ago that I still need to keep, but I can’t say the same for text messages. But if I did what happens if my cell phone gets too full? And then what if I lose it? Sure, those things can be saved in the cloud, but that’s where my email messages are anyway. Plus, my emails are easier to organize and search for.
Mobile phones and text messages are not ideal for important communications. While email may be less formal than, say, a certified letter, it’s more formal than a text message. What kind of damage are you doing to your personal brand if you tell a potential employer, “just text me,” especially if you’re someone who got a cell number that spells a naughty word? Or what if you got a job offer (or didn’t)? Do you want to get “Dude, u r not hired. Sry. Better luck nxt time” from an employer? Communicating with people who will be important to your life needs to be done in a way that’s more dignified than a cell phone.
Email is free, text messaging is not. I have to pay $10 every month to get unlimited texting, but my Gmail account is free. Admittedly neither cell phones nor computers are in every home in this country, but while text messages still cost money — even though they cost the cell carriers nothing to send (don’t get me started on that!) — it’s going to be a barrier for people to adopt it wholesale around the country

Email may not be the communication tool of choice, but it’s not going anywhere. And while SMS will become more prevalent in this country, I don’t believe it’s going to kill email, and I think people who say so are doing it for shock. We haven’t even killed postal mail, and yet the hip thing to do is to declare the death of free mail?

Kill off postal mail first, and then I’m more likely to believe you.

Photo credit: Jparise (Flickr)

Tags: Communication, email, social networks
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | View Comments

5 Ways to Build Your Online Personal Brand Without Being Boring

Monday, July 12th, 2010

I was having lunch with a friend last week, and he posed an interesting question: “how do you build your personal brand without evoking a ‘who cares’ attitude?”

Unfortunately, as people start growing their personal brand via social media, they’re just boring the bejeezus out of the rest of us. Here are five things you should be doing to avoid boring your network, and earning the reputation of “oh jeez, not this yawn-fest.”

Dude, you're boring!

Post things as they are happening. Give your content stream a sense of immediacy, to help people feel they are really there. Don’t tweet that you got stuck in traffic two hours after you got home; send a tweet that traffic is bad on a particular road (only if you’re completely stopped, please). Tweet about your experiences at a conference as they happen, not afterward.
Blend your personal and your work life. Rather than limiting yourself to being all work or all play, be both. No one truly expects you to only focus on work things, or expects you to only play and spend time with your family. Anyone who gets annoyed that you’re merging the other into your social media stream has unrealistic expectations, and is probably not worth staying connected to. It’s okay to tell your work friends when you have a personal victory you want to tell them about, and it’s okay to tell your social friends when something great happened at work. By blending the two parts of your life, you’re showing you’re a whole person.
Don’t focus strictly on one issue. If you decide not to do the work-life blend, at least make sure you’re not talking about the same thing over and over. We like that you’re sharing the joys of your new child, but we don’t want to see every single photo you take, to hear about everything the baby did, or how much you love your new bundle of joy. Similarly, don’t tell us about that one work or industry issue, every single meeting you have about it, or every journal and blog article you read about it. If you tell us about your personal life, tell us more than what your children are doing. If you tell us about work, tell us more than that one big issue you’ve been dealing with for six months.
Share, share, share. While it may seem easy to promote yourself and all the cool things you’re doing, if you spend all your time doing that, then you’re just as boring as that date you went on when the other person kept talking about themselves. Instead talk about other people, share what they’re doing, promote their ideas and their blog posts, and retweet the interesting articles they’re reading (retweet this article while you’re at it). Tell us what you think is cool, what you find interesting. The people you’re talking about will take notice and do the same for you.
Just accept the fact that you’re always going to bore somebody. I’d love to think that people hang on my every word, and eagerly await every tweet, blog post, and Facebook update, but they don’t. My personal friends don’t care about my work content, and my work friends don’t care what I do with my kids on the weekend.

Photo credit: Samael Trip (Flickr)

Tags: personal branding, Reputation Management, Social Media
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Networking, Reputation Management, Social Media, Twitter | View Comments

Social Media Is NOT Socially Isolating

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

A friend recently sent me a link to Tom Wright’s response to blogging and social media, wherein Wright called the two movements “cultural masturbation.” In it, he warned against the social isolationism of social media and blogging.

Blogging? Seriously? How is blogging any more socially isolating than just plain old writing? Writing a book, writing in your journal, writing a short story, writing a poem. Yes, these are all socially isolating in and of themselves, but what makes blogging soooo much different from every other form of writing?

(Hint: it doesn’t. It’s only believed to be a problem by people who don’t fully understand that blogging is just one more form of publishing.)

NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

Bah!

It’s easy to say something creates isolationism. Tom Wright says it about blogging and social media, that it will somehow keep people from interacting with other people. He worries that if we spend too much time in front of a computer screen, we will lose regular face-to-face contact with real people. We will substitute computer time for real time, and completely ruin society.

Double Bah!

This is nothing new. Experts have been wringing their hands about something making us lose touch with our humanity for years.

“Experts” said it about email and the Internet in the mid-90s.
“Experts” said it about television in the 40s and 50s.
“Experts” said it about movies in the 20s and 30s.
“Experts” said it about radio in the 20s.
“Experts” said it about the telephone at the turn of the century.
“Experts” said it about the automobile at the turn of the century.

I think the only thing who are isolated from society are the experts.

Tom Wright admits he doesn’t use social media, doesn’t know how to use it, and this somehow qualifies him to speak about the social and relational ramifications of social media? (He does admit to being an avid texter and emailer though; so is he socially isolated?)

For one thing, if he used social media to any degree, he would also know that many social media users — at least in the business setting — turn their online contacts into real-world contacts. I have personally drunk gallons of coffee with people I’ve met online. I’ve had conversations with them, done business with them, become friends with them. All people I never would have met if it hadn’t been for social media.

And I’m not the only one. My entire industry is rife with people who use social media to enhance and even create their careers.

Social Media is Not the Bad Guy, Human Behavior Is

Anything can be a detriment to human relationships: food, sex, exercise, fashion, sports, shopping, work, play, sleep, collecting, hobbies, cooking. You name it, and I can find someone obsessed with it, and then say that __________ is a detriment to human relationships, because someone took it too far.

There are always people who will take something too far. But to look at the outlier, that one in a million person, and extrapolate a calamitous end for anyone and everyone who uses it is just being a sensationalist.

Wright assumes that the people who spend all this time in front of a computer screen don’t work or go to school, and are already teetering on the brink of being a hermit, when they were tipped over the edge into complete solitude by the siren call of the online relationship.

If you’re doing social media right, you’re using it to create relationships that expand and extend into the real world. If you’re not doing it right, well, you probably spend too much time indoors with your eight cats already.

Tags: blogging, NT Wright, social isolationism, Social Media
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Networking, Social Media, Twitter, Video, Writing | View Comments

NOW I’m an Expert: I Was on FOX59 News Last Night

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

I had the opportunity and honor of being on Fox59 News at 10 last night, as a social media expert, to talk about how Generation Y is beginning to take their online reputation and privacy more seriously than they have in the past.

According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Reputation Management and Social Media, young people have surpassed the Baby Boomers in taking care of their online reputation. They’re hiding their negative photos — the so-called “Spring Break” photos, untagging themselves when they do appear online, and even practicing reverse search engine optimization to push their negative content off Google’s front page.

I was particularly proud that they used one of my favorite lines, one that I use at all my talks about reputation management: If you don’t want skeletons in your closets, don’t put the bodies in there in the first place.

Big thanks to Kyle Lacy for referring me to Tisha Lewis. And big thanks to Tisha “actually it’s TEE-sha” Lewis, her intern Andy, and her shooter (cameraman), Adam, for making the trek all the way out to the hinterlands of Fishers, Indiana to do the interview.

(As soon as the video becomes available, I’ll link to it here.)

Tags: Fox59, News, Reputation Management, Social Media
Posted in Facebook, Networking, News, Reputation Management, Social Media | View Comments

What Auto Racing Has Learned From Social Media

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

For the past week, I’ve been at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, covering the race for my Laughing Stalk blog as a media blogger. I’m one of the only, if not the only, non-race blogger here in the media center.

I’ve seen some pretty awesome stuff while I’ve been here. I met Rick Mears, interviewed Justin Wilson, but I think the coolest thing I’ve experienced is hearing that a race car designer has embraced social media and plans on making all their car designs and plans available to the public, a la open source.

I had a chance to talk with Ben Bowlby, the Chief Technology Officer for DeltaWing Racing about this impressive new car. While this model is only a wind tunnel model — the proposed version wouldn’t actually look like this, and it’s already 6 months out of date — a lot of people aren’t real wild about it. Of course, that’s because most of them haven’t understood the concept behind it.

What I was especially impressed by was that DeltaWing wants to make all of their designs available to the public, to students, to the media, and to the entire racing community. People are allowed to take the designs, copy them, modify them, incorporate bits of it into their own design, whatever they want.

If a student wants to make an improvement to the front wishbone, he can submit it back to DeltaWing, and if they approve it, the student gets royalties from any racing team that uses it.

The only other place I’ve seen this is in social media and open source software, Linux and Mozilla being the two biggest examples.

Whether you like the new design or not, you have to admit the open source concept is pretty cool.

Tags: auto racing, Indianapolis 500, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, open source, race cars, Social Media
Posted in Networking, Social Media, Social Networks | View Comments

Why Designers Should Avoid Contests and Crowdsourcing

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Chris Brogan got a bunch of people’s panties in a twist last week.

He blogged about a logo design project he created on a site called 99Designs to crowd source a new logo design.

99Designs is a godsend to businesspeople on a budget, but it’s an evil abomination to designers trying to make a fair wage for their skill and years of experience. Let’s say I need a logo. I create a project on the site (it’s called a “contest”), set my budget (the “prize”), and designers will submit their design concepts. Anyone who wants to submit a concept can do so. The project owner will then select the winning concept, and award the prize to the winner.

I saw a $795 for a learning portal redesign, an $888 contest for an eBay template design, and the highest project of $2,225 for a web redesign. But most of the prizes rolled in around $295 – $350.

$350 for a professionally made logo design.

Tell a real graphic designer about this, and she’s going to work herself up into a good frothing rant about the cheapness of business people and how hack designers cheapen the entire industry by shortchanging themselves.

“Any twit with Photoshop Elements and a weekend seminar under their belt thinks suddenly they’re a graphic designer,” she’ll shout, followed by the obligatory “you get what you pay for,” and rolling her eyes so far back in her head, she can see her entire third grade year.

Brogan’s post unearthed lovers and haters of 99Designs. The designers all hated it, except for the ones who were still learning the keyboard shortcuts for their copy of Elements. The businesspeople all loved it, because, hey, $350 logo.

Their argument falls along the lines of “if someone’s willing to accept a low bid, then I’m stupid for not taking it. No one is forcing them to accept these projects.”

I think 99Designs is dangerous, and urge any decent graphic designer to avoid it. (The sucky ones should stay with it though.) But since the businesspeople seem to think it’s an acceptable model, I wonder if they’re willing to try it out for themselves.

Using the Crowdsourcing Model For Business

My company needs a social media campaign. I would like you to write up a strategy, set up some social media accounts, build each of them out to about 5,000 people, and then let me see your work. If I like your strategy, and if I like the people you added to the accounts, I’ll pay you $500.

You’ll be competing against other social media strategists, like Jason Falls, Tara Strong, and Scott Stratten. The winning bid will get $500, while the losing bids will go away empty handed, with nothing to show except some social networks they spent 7 – 10 hours to create and grow.
I want to hire a landscaping company to mow my lawn every week. I need each interested company to cut my lawn once, and whoever does the best job will get the winning contract for the rest of the summer, at $15 per week. I’m offering that much, because that’s how much the kid down the street offered.
I’d also like my house redecorated, but I need to do it on spec. Any interested designer should be willing to redecorate one room of my house. If I pick your design, you’ll get $1,000 to do the entire house. I figure, I’ve seen the home redecorating shows on HGTV, and it doesn’t seem that hard, I just don’t have the time to do it.

I get both sides of this argument. I really do. But my heart lies firmly in one camp: the creative side.

I’m a business owner, but I’m also a creative type. When I write something, I get paid for it. I don’t have the time to do anything on spec, because I’ve grown beyond the need for possibilities of payment and “exposure.” The time I spend writing on spec is the same time I could be using to write for pay.

I think asking designers to submit themselves to this kind of creative minimum wage is heinous, because we would never ask a businessperson to do it. You would never write a full-blown social media campaign and start executing it for the possibility of $500. You would never cut a lawn, decorate a room, or fix my car for free, just in the hopes that I might hire you. I would never ask a business owner to do this because they’re in business to make money.

Just like graphic designers.

If you don’t have a budget, that’s fine. Go hire a college student who’s still finishing his or her graphic design degree. Barter your product or services, or do it yourself for free. But don’t ask for spec work. It cheapens the industry, but it makes you look cheaper.

Tags: Chris Brogan, contests, crowdsourcing, graphic designers, no!spec, spec work
Posted in Communication, Networking, Opinion | View Comments

Category: Networking

Five signs you suck at Twitter.

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