Californication – a prime-time Showtime TV drama – celebrates the womanizing exploits of a lazy rockstar writer named Hank Moody (played David Duchovny). It has some good moments and sharp, engaging dialogue mixed in with the rough. But it jumped the shark for me personally, when it engaged in ultra-sneaky product placement for a social media site that pushed past all known bounds of advertising.

Chillin’ and shillin’ with a product placement for Guitar Hero

Moody lusts after a hot college student (Eva Amurri) who says she moonlights as a stripper. When he goes to her strip club to find out more, she doesn’t go by her normal name. Her stripper pseudonym, she explains, is “Ashley Madison.”

“Hi! On this show, I’m just a dating site ad disguised as a woman.”

She introduces herself to the other guests by her full pseudonym, and they emphatically repeat her name full name – more than once – to clarify it. Something about they way she emphasized her name seemed unnatural for a TV show. And something about her name faintly ‘rung a bell.’ Sure enough, when I Google’d her name – I found AshleyMadison.com – a dating site for married people looking to have affairs.

Wow! A prime-time TV character who is essentially nothing but sexploitation ad for a shady dating site! I’m used to fake “hotties” from dating sites showing up on Facebook and Craigslist and spamming in my inbox. But this was a whole ‘nother level in stealth, commercialization and subconscious suggestion implanting.

• Was naming a alluring character after a shady dating site ‘clever marketing’? Hell yes!
• Was this advertising effective? It worked on me, I Google’d “her” and encountered the product.
• Does it kill the show’s credibility? Definitely. How can you trust the characters after that?

A more traditional, semi-transparent product placement for Skype

If the content is otherwise credible and top-notch, I can tolerate a smattering of more traditional product placement – like the featuring of a Skype logo through a foggy, translucent window in a scene where characters using Skype’s call-waiting features and audio tones. But I worry a little when I start to think “Ya know, that entire scene and dialogue wasn’t created for artistic or dramatic reasons – it was just filler designed to facilitate the placement of a subliminal advertisement.”

But the very essence of a TV drama is to create lifelike characters that people trust and ‘believe in’ enough to allow them escape from reality for 30 minutes. And when the actors and actresses are pitching products while they’re supposed to be sincerely seducing us into suspension of disbelief – the whole illusion goes up in a flash.

What’s your take on product placement? Have you seen social media sites make paid appearances on other shows?

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Gary Vaynerchuk is ‘the man.’ He’s a 33-year-old, charismatic and slightly over-the-top video blogger who’s managed to grow a multi-million dollar business by mixing his passions for wine and social media marketing. You can join along in his video wine tasting adventures or follow him on Twitter.

What excites you the most about social media?

“Everything has changed in the last 3 years. The fact that you can use social media for your marketing, and not have to pay millions of dollars, has really, really sent this whole game in a different direction.”

Wine 2.0: Gary brings refreshing new-skool energy into the old world of wine.

This week you’re putting out a new book, “Crush It,” about living your passion. What makes it different from other business books?

“First, I’ve really lived what I talk about in my book. I have built up an enormous following and a substantial financial business with social media. I’m a real entrepreneur and business man. A lot of people out there commentate and analyze, but aren’t actually living it. It’s sort of like when athletes are analyzing sports, rather than people who are not experts. The athletes have actually lived it.

Second, I’m not a bullshit artist. It’s 160 pages, straight to the point. I attack it head on. People don’t have to go out and buy it, but for 14 bucks, it’s definitely worth it.”

How important is it compromise and adapt your passion to the marketplace and to social media??

“Not so much. I promise you, dude, that if you went back 7 years ago… and I talked about Ultimate Fighting or MMA (mixed martial arts) – you would have said that “No, that’s too small!“

Attack your passion & single-handedly make it bigger.

If something is your real, real passion… not just because you’re chasing cash.. but because you love it.. no matter how small that niche is, you have to attack it. First of all, you can single-handedly make your niche bigger. Wine isn’t small, but I’ve definitely created wine drinkers because of my passion. So I think perusing your real passion is imperative, it’s the only way do go!”

You’ve got a rockstar level of fans, groupies and requests. How do you stay productive with all the chatter and noise?

“I do the best I can. I do have an assistant, and right hand men and women that help me run different parts of my companies. The sheer volume of communications is overwhelming, but it’s not scary, because that’s exactly what I want. Sure… 1,000 e-mails a day is intimidating… but, hey, I’ve asked for it. So you just put your head down and you grind. See, I’m not scared to do the work, and I think that’s really important.”

A lot of people reach out and ask stuff from you. What kind of approaches get your attention?

“I don’t mind people hustling, I don’t mind someone coming at me in a ‘one-way-street’ kinda of way – asking for favors. Of course, if someone offers something that might also help you- it’s gonna be more exciting – because it can help my brand when I’m looking at it from business perspective. The problem is, when someone says ‘Hey, I’m trying to get started, please help me out‘ – it’s not differentiated because I get that 100 times a day. So I wonder, ‘Who do I pick?’ And sometimes you get in a situation where you pick no one, because you don’t want 3 people to get pumped and 97 to get pissed.”

When you’re a ‘nobody’ who’s just starting out, how can you self-promote and get other people to pimp your stuff?

“That’s really easy. I was there, like everybody else: you put out good content. Right? Somebody who is an ‘absolute nobody’ can beat everyone on their first day if they write the greatest article or make the greatest video – put it out there – and go into the communities around that subject matter and interact with people. I went to wine forums and wine blogs, and just became part of the community.”

What are you thoughts on the ego? How can someone be confident and successful without coming off like a narcissist or a dick?

Have good intentions. Don’t be a self-centered dick.

“I think it’s different for everybody. You have to know where you’re coming from and have good intentions. I have really good intentions, and that saves my ass, or else everyone would think I was an egotistical jerk. I’m confident, I have a lot of bravado, and I scream and yell. If you’re coming from a good place and you’re really trying to do good things, it’s going to absolutely collide and then offset your ego and self-confidence. Now if you’re a one way street, and it’s all about you and you’re all ego – it’s gonna be difficult to overcome that..”

How do you plan and make decisions about your business?

“It’s kind of played out how I thought it would go. When I make a decision, I’m in it for the process and not for the results. I’m happy with the process because I’m learning. I don’t make decisions in the beginning like ‘Well, I’m gonna be this: ____.’ I don’t make 3 and 2 and 1 year plans. I just make one big one, like : ‘I wanna buy the NY Jets‘ Everything on the way there is kind of irrelevant.”

You make a lot of money. Does money excite and motivate you much? What really drives you the most?

“Well, I wanna buy the NY Jets.. so I need money, because it’s gonna cost billions of dollars. I also live for the human interaction. When I get an e-mail that says ‘Hey man, I watched one of your keynotes and it changed my life!” – that stuff is beyond priceless. I want to spend time with my family, meet as many people as possible, and buy that football team.”

What’s the most important thing for people to remember as they build their brand on the Web?

Internet marketing is a marathon, not a quick sprint! image: JaHoVil

“The quicker people realize that this is a marathon and not a sprint, the quicker they’re gonna win. Way too many internet marketers want everything to happen in one minute. You don’t build million dollar businesses in a minute. That’s something I wish a lot more people understood.”

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Over the past two years, social media has quickly flown onto mainstream business marketing’s radar. This boom has created thousands of “Social Media Kindergarten Teacher” types with lower-intermediate skills… who get passed off as industry ‘experts’ on unsuspecting novices or clients. Next, there’s a class of smart, relatively advanced social media users who are still learning the professional + business consulting ropes. Above them, there are a handful of true social media experts who personally define the industry’s best practices and train the mere ‘professionals.’

“Expert” skiers can ride ANY type of terrain confidently. Can you handle all things social media? photo: Miles Holden

These folks are the 7th degree black belts who can handle almost any kind of social marketing crisis or solve any challenging professional puzzle with panache. The ones who deserve to be called “expert” are distinguished, in my book, by a few highly-uncommon traits and characteristics. If several of the following ‘needs improvement’ points describe you, then you might not be a social media expert yet:

1. You Lack Expert-level Online Productivity Skills. Do you spend all day surfing the Web, peering over your pictures in Facebook and chatting on Skype/AIM ? Do you struggle to get in an hour of ‘real work’ each day cuz you’re so distracted over Tweetdeck? Do you get feverishly excited each time a new blog comment or friend request comes in? Then you’re probably not a social media expert, yet! Experts know how to deal with the noisy online distractions like Chuck Norris knows how do deal with bad guys. They’ve got custom-built tools, shortcuts, batch processes and assistants – and they know how to use them. Time is (big) money for social media experts; they can’t afford to fuck around.
2. You Haven’t Yet Monetized Your Social Media Presence into Consistent, Substantial Income. Do spend the bulk of your time on social media tasks that don’t really make you any money ? Do you have a corporate or agency “social media day job” where you’re constantly being reigned-in or encouraged to perform below your true potential? Are you a consultant who doesn’t spend half your day fighting off big budget project + speaking proposals with a stick? Then you’re probably not a social media expert, yet!
3. You Lack Expert-level Online Communications Skills and Etiquette. Social media experts have a polished panache for communicating online – and getting messages out through blogs, video, audio and status updates. They know how to connect with people, how to persuade and convince, how to criticize, when to bite their tongue, handle disasters gracefully, and they constantly get people to promote their stuff without looking like pimp.

If your online communications aren’t ultra-polished and there isn’t much of an audience or reaction to what you have to say online… then you probably aren’t a social media expert, yet!

4. You Have Few High-level, Inside Contacts. It’s not about the number of friends. Most ‘real life’ social media experts have close, cultivated connections with the right people. People with power and influence to help get your (client’s) message out to the target audience, or who can go to bat “behind the scenes” for you. Do you know someone who can get your (clients’) product launch written up in Mashable, Wired, or TechCrunch? Do have inside contacts at Twitter / Digg / Facebook’s account team? Can you e-mail an engineer at Google with a confidential problem, or DM a power user who will help you get you 100 retweets or Facebook fans in 15 minutes? If this sounds like a fantasy, rather than what you do on a daily basis…you might not be a social media expert, yet!
5. You’re Not “Blazing” with Creativity and Intuition. In order to be effective at social marketing, “You have to be part sociologist and part salesman…. being extremely creative is arguably just as important,” says Stuart Foster. Social media experts also have an uncanny, intuitive grasp of how the social web’s collective-mind works and how it will likely react to any given campaign, headline, image or idea. How? They’ve witnessed thousands of successes and failures – both their own and others- which give them an expansive databank of experience to analyze and construct hypotheses from. If you haven’t gotten so deep into the fabric of the social web that it permeates your consciousness – allowing you to reliably tap in to the higher, “genius” brain-circuits of creativity and intuition, on demand – you might not be a social media expert, yet!

Experts ride so deep in the information wave, it becomes an extension of their intuition & consciousness. Photo: PrGibbs

What ‘Expert’ Skills Are You Working On Cultivating?

I’m not a social media expert, yet. I made this list as a self-reflection checklist: I’m guilty of almost all of them. Some people I admire who DO have many of these ‘expert’ traits of business acumen, productivity and creativity… are the ones who I list in my blogroll (under “Rockstars”).

Do you agree or disagree with these 5 signs? What ‘expert skills’ are you most interested in personally developing?

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Social Media Rockstar Runs on Thesis Theme for Wordpress

Thesis is an easy-to-customize, premium Wordpress theme that comes with full technical support. The beautiful style and pixel-perfect typography makes your writing look more polished and professional. If you’re serious about blogging and you want to focus more on your writing and do less hassling with PHP code… then check out the Thesis theme for Wordpress now! – Brett

Mani Karthik is an India-based professional blogger and SEO consultant. Mani has an insightful daily SEO blog (in English) with over 5,000 subscribers, a team of overseas employees, and world-class level of search + social media skills that distinguish him as one of the very top international web consultants in Asia. You can follow Mani on Twitter or subscribe to his SEO blog.

Where do you live, what do you do for work and fun?

“I’m from Cochin, India (a tropical city on the southwest coast, in Kerala province). I make a living by helping people sell things online, fine tune their websites to better standards, make them Google friendly and help them build traffic. Basically, I help them sell their stuff, so they can pay me in return. So I’m a SEO/Social Media consultant and I blog, too.

Cochin is famous for yachts, one of the most beautiful coastal towns in India

For fun… I watch a lot of movies, spend time with my lovely family, and travel a lot.”

Tell us a little bit about the social media scene in India?

“Social media scene in India is in the infant stage but it’s growing fast. The number of Internet users in India is huge… but the number of potential “buyers” is comparatively much smaller, so a lot of what’s happening here revolves around brand building and positioning. IT is empowering some people in very remote places to build businesses. There’s this concept in India that social media is just about having an Orkut and Facebook profile. But this idea is rapidly dwindling, and more and more people and companies have started fully using social media (blogging, Twitter, video, etc.) to their advantage.

Orkut is a Google-owned social networking site that is big in South America and parts of Asia.

Many of the smartest potential web users are out there on the most popular channels like Orkut and Facebook. And most of the top players are from the real estate / movie / telecom and IT industries…”

Is the Web affecting the social class (or caste system) in India? How is it changing society?

“There’s a huge gap between the web and traditional social classification systems. On the web, there’s nothing significant to classify you to a particular category, except for your occupation/job. When it comes to social media and companies / brands, he most important “classes” are people’s income and their willingness to spend it. I don’t see any other emerging social classes and caste systems online, yet, but I could be wrong.”

Is it possible to keep up with the important little details in both social media and SEO? How do you stay on the cutting edge?

“I don’t want to call it easy, but keeping myself updated with what’s happening online is something I take pleasure in. And since SEO and social media are my favorite subjects, it’s a natural process. You know when you focus so much on something that you enjoy doing, the stress eases off and it becomes a habit. Its become a habit of mine to be on the edge. And I must be lucky, since I love it. ”

A lot of people think that SEO is inherently shady, fake or black hat? Why do you think they have this perception??

“I think it’s because people focus too much and pressure on results… both SEOs and also people who hire them. You put so much pressure that the process becomes stressful, and SEOs go for shortcuts to results. The problem with shortcuts is that even if you get the results, you haven’t earned them and it often proves fatal. You get kicked off search engines, you get Google penalties and it becomes a major business problem.

“I always make it a point never to give false promises to my clients. If you know your stuff, one must be able to give an idea about what can be achieved and even more importantly what cannot. If the client does not know the rules of SEO and Search Engines, try educating them rather than ripping them off for the money they’d spend on your false promises. Unfortunately, in both SEO and social media consulting, there are people who care more about easy money than having a good reputation.”

Do you have any tips or tools for social media productivity or time management?

image: ChibiJosh

• Learn speed reading. Quick reading comprehension is not about how many stories/articles you can read in a minute, but about how many stories you can pick out as spam /
  worthless and quickly skip. Being a social media enthusiast, good filtering ability is a must!
• Nurture talent and hire imperfect-but-promising talent. I have a team of people working for me from different parts of the world. I often outsource jobs to them with clear instructions on what to do and what not to. With their urge to learn and clear guidelines I provide, it takes the burden off me!
• Don’t stick to a schedule. Schedules and time sheets have not worked for me, even at school. I can’t completely stick to a schedule because I keep finding new things all the time. However, schedules are good for doing mundane things like reports/regular to-do lists etc. Keep a larger part of your time in exploring and finding new things and a very small part scheduled. Try it, it works for me!

What are some “must read” internet marketing blogs?

“I enjoy reading Mashable, Readwriteweb, Problogger, Shoemoney, John Chow, Jeremiah Owyang, Dan Zarrella and Social Media Rockstar.

You’re one of India’s most elite independent consultants and bloggers. What kind of skills, drive and personality does it take to ‘make it’ in this business?

“I think you got to be fun, open minded, hard working and success-craving to keep going. You meet different people from different parts of the world, with different perspectives and ideas, you’ve got to understand each one and be genuinely interested about how you can help them.”

These ancient tidal fishing nets are a prominent visual icon / tourist attraction at Cochin’s habor. image: Jenny M

Do you have tips for making friends and building relationships online?

“Be fun, be helpful and an expert at what you are best at. Do all those things yourself that you want to see in another guy online. And yeah..be ready to work at different time zones – because not everyone is in your part of the world.”
.”

What are your long-term goals? At what point will you be really stoked and able to relax, knowing that you’ve “made it”?

“I want to either join a team of similar minded success craving group of guys or find the group myself and make something extra ordinary out of it. I have moving targets and want it to remain that way, rather than work over a final goal. But on a personal note, I’d like to travel around the world.”

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You’re cranking out some solid blog posts for your company. And you’ve just convinced the boss to let you set up a Twitter account and a Facebook fan page, too. But the boss is worried it’ll take up too much time, and she asks: “Can you automatically update Twitter and Facebook with our new blog posts?” Yes, you can. Here’s how to do it reliably and for free.

This method will allow you to link out of Facebook’s walled garden and get maximum traffic for your publishing efforts.

Step 1: Getting RSS Updates Automatically Posted to Twitter

Twitterfeed is a handy, free website & application that will “feed your blog to Twitter.”

1. Go to Twitterfeed. Sign up for an account. Verify and login.
2. Click “Create New Feed” button

3. Click “Connect your feed to your Twitter account” button. Enter your (company) username and password on Twitter’s site and click “Allow.”
4. Enter in a name for your blog’s feed, and enter the RSS feed URL.
5. Click on “Advanced Settings” and you can choose the hourly update frequency, URL shorteners, titles, suffixes, etc.

It might take a couple of hours to get working. Once going, it’s fairly reliable unless Twitter goes down or has API issues. Check the stream every few days to make sure all is well.

Step 2: Getting Twitter Updates (’tweets’) Automatically Posted to a FB Fan Page

Once you have your content automatically posted to Twitter, via Twitterfeed, you can then have it automatically piped to your Facebook fan page with a free (donation supported) application called “Selective Twitter Status.” Whenever you tweet with the hashtag #fb – (example: “666 Signs You’re NOT a Social Media Expert – http://bit.ly/poser #fb“) – Selective Twitter Status will selectively grab that tweet and post it onto your FB fan page. Here’s how to hook it up:

1. Go to “Selective Twitter Status” when you’re logged into FB.
2. Enter your (company) Twitter username and “allow” the pop-up permission to post updates.
3. Click on the “Your Fan Pages” tab and enter the (company) Twitter name next to the page you want updated. Click “save changes.”

4. Open up another browser tab and log back in to Twitterfeed.
5. On the main Feed Dashboard, click the oval “Edit Feed” button.
6. In the box marked “Post Suffix,” enter #fb.
   

   
   This tells Twitterfeed to put these characters at the end of each tweet, so that FB’s Selective Twitter Status will “selectively” post this new content to your FB fan page. This way you are free to chat with people and tweet random things, but only the actual blog posts marked with #fb will be rebroadcast on Facebook.

(Note #1: Facebook has a new built-in application that will allow you to update your Twitter feed from your FB page, which can be handy for some people. Check it out. But personally I don’t want to log into Facebook everyday and tinker around with the clunky interface and endless distractions – I want fully-automatic updates.)

(Note #2: Facebook has a popular, built-in application called “Notes” – that will easily import your blog content and/or pictures onto your fan page – and keep people stuck in Facebook’s walled garden. But as a marketer, I want to drive people out of Facebook and onto my clients’ pages – and I want to post external links.)

What If I Don’t Want the #FB Tag to Show Up On My Tweets?

The Selective Twitter Status app requires that you put the tag #FB on all tweets you want to show up on your Facebook Fan Page. This can look a little ugly, and it can slightly discourage people from sharing or retweeting the content. Here’s how I get around having a visible #FB tag on all my blog post tweets:

1. Make two Twitter accounts. Have your “main” one with the preferred username and nice background, and a secondary “dummy” account with a random username. (The purpose of the “dummy” account is just to update Facebook – it doesn’t matter who follows it.)
2. Make two Twitterfeed accounts. Have the first Twitterfeed account update your main account, and under “advanced settings” make sure it does not add any prefixes to the tweets for a nice, clean look. Have the second Twitterfeed account pipe your RSS feed to the “dummy” Twitter account and make sure the “#fb” prefix is added to every tweet.
3. Go into Facebook, click the “Application” option in the extreme bottom left bar of the screen – and find Selective Twitter Status or just click this link.
4. Set up the Selective Twitter Status application so that the dummy account, with all of the posts marked #fb by Twitterfeed, gets piped into the fan page of your choice.

Hooray! Now you’re pimpin’ the power of Web 2.0 – and you have one Twitterfeed account feeding beautiful links to your main Twitter account, and a secondary Twitterfeed account feeding #fb-tagged RSS updates to your dummy Twitter account… which all gets imported straight to your Facebook fan page – free of tags and noise!

If this sounds a little complex, it is, but for me it works well. I get an RSS feed turned into clean, clickable links that are broadcast out on Twitter and FB automagically. If you have a monthly budget, you might want to investigate Involver – which claims to offer premium features for FB page fan management – or explore other apps.

Good luck and let me know what you find or discover in the comments below!

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Stuart Foster is a east coast blogger and marketing strategist. A former top Digg user and prolific blogger, his brain is bursting with a never-ending flow of content and ideas. Stuart’s media strategies aren’t “theoretical” – they come after many thousands of hours of experience with the ups and downs of real-life social media. You can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his blog, The Lost Jacket …

Where do you live, what do you do for work and fun?

“I live in Boston, MA, but I grew up in Maine and went to school there. I work as a Managing Partner at The Lost Jacket and as a Social Media Strategist at Mullen. I also have a wide variety of side projects and consulting work that I do through both entities. When I’m not working, (which is almost never) I’m running, reading, going out to a variety of cool events and getting involved with the entrepreneurial scene in Boston.”

What’s this whole “social media” thing really all about?

“Social media is basically cutting down on the time needed to organize, establish relationships and build communities. It’s a time saver and immediate opening to exploit when building relationships. It’s gotten me access to a variety of people that probably wouldn’t take a call from me (but are more then happy to listen to me online). I look at the internet as being a road. Social media has transformed that road into a four lane highway.”

What does your day or week (honestly) look like?

“I probably end up working 12-16 hour days almost everyday. Sleep is not something that I end up seeing a lot of, for better or worse. I spend about 2 hours on every blog post. 4-6 hours a day responding to comments and adding comments onto other blogs within my network. I’ve cut down on the social bookmarking (I’m only doing outreach now) so only about about 5-10 hours a week on that. Most of my time is now spent doing client work and building the foundation/model for The Lost Jacket. I’m currently working with Stonyfield Farm, Ask.com and Global Post.”

What’s your overall strategy towards being successful at social media?

“Realize that you have to just keep climbing. You’re never at the top. You just keep reaching new level after new level. If you keep this attitude up, you’ll end up pretty high. The key is not looking back and to just keep plugging away. Successes and failures are similar to any type of business. Keeping them in perspective and believing strongly in what you are doing is the best way to be moving forward…”

How is social media adoption affecting human consciousness?

“I think it has to be making people smarter. If I looked at my baseline knowledge a year ago and compared it to today… I’d scare myself. I knew nothing, comparably. But that’s the speed at which you can digest the lessons via blogs, Twitter and from leveraging relationships. You’re at warp speed via social media and you learn just as fast…”

Is social media making us smarter or just getting us high? image: vaXzine

Are there any dark sides to social media / social media culture that people don’t like to talk about?

“I’d say that SEO/social bookmarking is not really understood all that well. I tend to find that anything that isn’t understood usually is perceived as being “black hat” (even if it isn’t). Bury groups and other more subversive techniques are common place on places like Digg but I tend to not pay that much attention to them. They aren’t really worth wasting my time. Are you creating great content and not being a tool? You should be fine.”

What are some of the biggest mistakes or misconceptions that you see novices consistently make?

“Endless self promotion. It’s annoying and makes you look incredibly stupid. Save your bullets for one big push…don’t spam out every blog post or Digg link.

Also…the concept that “social” is free. Nope. If anything, it can end up being more expensive because you are spending more time actually catering to your client/customer’s needs.”

So what’s the “secret” to building social influence?

“There is none. Just be consistent and relentless. Never stop working, learning and creating. Otherwise you will be overtaken by other more hungry individuals. A lot of competition is out there at the moment…just find your niche and own it. The business side of social media is the most important in my eyes. Without money to fire the engine behind innovation? Then you wouldn’t see a lot of the advances that are coming out these days.”

Stuart at a Boston cafe.

Do you think that social media is a bubble, like the .com bubble? Any chance that people’s enthusiasm will wane, or it will pop?

“I think — because it’s a philosophy more than a technique — it won’t die. Techniques become obsolete. Philosophies become integrated into the business psyche. People’s enthusiasm may wane to the bullshit surrounding the medium…but it will eventually be overwhelmed by new shinier stuff..”

Who are some up-and-coming social media geniuses who are worth following?

“David Spinks and Lauren Fernandez are some pretty badass PR/Social media peeps. If you haven’t started listening and learning from them, yet, I’d get on that! Carla Blumenthal who is my partner at The Lost Jacket is crazy smart and will only get better at exploring the ins and outs of business as time goes on. A new wave of people is coming. They’re more relentless and hungry than those that have come before them. These names will be familiar before very long.”

What are some predictions for the future of social media? What are two or three things that you think will happen?

“We’ll stop talking about social media for one. Social solutions will just be integrated into business in general. Models will change and rules will be broken…but social media will eventually go the way of email and just be integrated into everyday aspects of business.

I’m very excited to see the new models and ideas coming out from the likes of Dachis Group and the Altimeter Group. The social business concepts are interesting and exciting. It will be exciting to see who knocks it out of the park first. ”

What are your long-term goals? At what point will you be really stoked and able to relax, knowing that you’ve “made it”?

“I think the answer to that for me is ‘never’! I’m a pretty intense, driven individual. I want to succeed beyond anything that I thought possible. Although, at this point, being the head of an integrated agency would be my biggest dream. That way I could build brands and strategies utilizing a variety of different marketing techniques. It’s definitely a lot of hard work, but something I can definitely see myself conquering in the future..”

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The social hierarchy of some groups is relatively “flat” and people are mostly treated as equals. But many groups are defined by a palpable “vertical” hierarchy based on clout and social class. In these groups, people spend a huge chunk of their social energy gaining and maintaining personal status.

Social climbing and posing with influential bloggers @ SXSW. image: vissage

At the top of the social class pyramid are the uber-elite members with the most highly-desired traits. In the venture capital / startup world, they are the rich investors and people whose companies were acquired by larger companies. In the conference scene, it’s the big name “rockstar” bloggers and speakers who jet around the world – blurring the line between business and partying. Online, it’s the power users with the strongest Twitter / Digg accounts or blog followings – who have the digital influence to launch new content into the heights of popularity.

Because the elite have money to invest in new ideas… or they can to decide who gets to speak at conferences or whose stories make the home page – they literally have the power to define what’s cool in a scene. The elite caste members set the mold that those below them feel great pressure to emulate. The pressure to leave behind those with undesirable traits can be heavy – even if that includes oneself. Change your clothes, get a new haircut, learn the lingo and get seen talking to the right people!

The Principle of Proximity

Social climbing is usually done by the principle of proximity – where the ticket to higher class is frequently associating with people of a higher class than yours. You don’t have to be a rich genius; you just have find a way to be associated with one. You can date one, or even just work as their low-level assistant – an you’ll be treated as a member of a influential servant caste. You don’t have to be a famous blogger, you just have to be seen @replying to them on Twitter all the time. At social media conferences, one can observe people “posing” and clamoring to stand in dense groups near higher-status people… while lower status, less-connected people stand in sparse groups on the periphery.

Naomi Dunford writes about the pandemic of social climbing at SXSW – and how name dropping, ass kissing, and using cryptic buzzwords help people establish themselves as well-connected “somebodies” in the know. Dr. Trix writes a fascinating analysis of classism and vanity in the West Coast rave scene – where he describes people emptying their back accounts on custom clothes, tattoos and piercings in order to be accepted by the elite, rich trustafarian peacocks.

Dr. Trix argues that members of higher classes usually subject people to a lot of scrutiny before accepting them into their world and they tend to look down the most on the people in the class directly below theirs. The billionaires smirk at the millionaires… and so on down the ladder. As you move down the class ladder towards the bottom, people become more welcoming because they are heavily oppressed by the upper classes. Social climbing gets a bad name because it often involves turning a cold shoulder. Even if some people don’t intentionally oppress others, they spend so much time and energy “climbing” that they rarely have any energy left to smile or chat with someone who can’t help boost their status.

Road Blocking

Social climbers are always reaching up – but they sometimes stamp down on the fingers of others below them. Road blocking is my term for deliberately excluding or sabotaging people – with the (unconscious) intention of maintaining your one’s perch on the social ladder. It’s where social climbing can get pathological and downright nasty.

Road blocks can be a simple as quietly pulling out someone’s speaker application because you’d rather have the limelight to yourself – or as complex as creating a whole suite of false, libelous rumors about someone and spreading them on multiple fronts. Online “bury brigades” gang up and sabotage people’s social media efforts.

Cliques and private companies use unwritten road blocks to keep everyone new out – allowing them to hand filter those with the most desirable traits. Talentless hacks use roadblocks to prevent other people from competing with them, as do best-of-breed champions. Road blocking often done in competitive social scenes, but it’s the shadow side of social climbing that is rarely talked about.

What is your own observations on social climbing? What is the hierarchy of different social classes in our scene — which groups are at the top and bottom?

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Every day, around 30 new people follow me on Twitter. Then around the exact same number of people usually unfollow me. They’re apparently upset that I haven’t blindly reciprocated their “friendship,” despite the fact that they’ve never even said “hi” or interacted with me. They’re so obsessed with numbers games… that they don’t seem to understand the most basic social networking principle, where you have to be sociable and personally interact with people before you win their trust and friendship.

Social Marketing = Constant, Conscious Personal Interaction

Social relationships evaporate quickly. Personal interaction is the “glue” that holds them together. image: imelda

Take a moment to think of the “people online you actually care about.” Usually, the important folks are those who have taken the time to personally interact with you or acknowledged you (recently). These are people you’re willing to help out and stand up for. When you’re under pressure or pressed for time, the people who haven’t interacted with you become second-class “nobodies” who are incredibly easy to ignore and forget. No matter how cool or famous they are.

Here are 6 tips for cultivating authentic, long-term, “sticky” personal connections – and maintaining them:

1. Send a quick personal note every time you follow / fan / friend someone.

Don’t just blindly add people without interacting with them – and don’t dare send Auto DMs or cookie-cutter messages. A quick, personalized friend request note that says “We met last week at the Social Media Meetup, enjoyed discussing design with you. Let’s keep in touch?” or an @reply saying “Cindy, you always find the hilarious side of mundane situations. It’s a pleasure to follow you! ” or “Just checked out your Flickr photos. Amazing mountain shots!” is enough to make a strong, personal impression. Then most people will take a moment to check you out or take your request seriously.

2. Leave a quick comment on friends’ blogs every time you stop by.

If you’re already wasting two minutes to check out a blog post, why not go all the way and take another 30 seconds to leave a quick comment? This will transform you from an anonymous nobody to a friend and supporter, who is a valuable and unforgettable part of their online social community. This isn’t just altruism, it quickly builds up your own reputation & social karma card. (Tech tip: easyComment plugin for Firefox makes entering your name and e-mail address quick and painless.)

3. Retweet, link to & talk about what other people have to say.

Don’t be totally self centered. Link out to what other people have to say about topics you’re interested in. Retweet content you feel is worth sharing or endorsing. Forgetting to do this is the online equivalent of going to a cocktail party and launching into an endless monologue about yourself.

4. Respond to everyone who reaches out. Don’t drop the ball.

The deeper you get into the social web, the more “requests” will start to show up in your inbox and in DMs and @replies. People are usually reaching out to ask for something, says Jemimah Owyang. Try to get back to everyone who sends you a heartfelt (non-copy-and-pasted) request… but don’t be afraid to say “no,” be very brief in your response, or propose payment if someone is asking you to embark on a non-trivial consulting project. If you accidentally ignore someone a couple of times, they’ll likely start to “forget about” you.

5. Never pitch someone without getting to know them.

An essential, but widely overlooked marketing principle is to give before you try and get. At the very least, before you pitch someone with a proposal that will benefit you – you need to take a few minutes and get to know (about) the person you’re asking. It’s tacky and rude to request something of a blogger or power user without knowing their name and what they do. Don’t think of pitching / requests as a one-time hustle – think of it as building the recognition and trust from someone who can help you over the long-term. You never know when you’re gonna need their help again – so first impressions are huge.

6. Be grateful and explicitly thank people.

When someone does something for you – like promotes your content or links to you – don’t forget to thank them! A little recognition and gratefulness creates a powerful reinforcement for more positive action – and it goes a long way towards making sure that person doesn’t forget you. (Big thanks for @mnphysicist and @MoneyEnergy for reminding me to add this supercritical, relationship-cementing tip.)

It’s A Jungle Out There. Be Human.

People are blitzed each week with thousands of messages online, a large percentage of them are bogus & unsavory ones. For every genuine person who wants to connect, there’s a dozen marketing hustlers on Twitter trying to blindly build up their numbers, or spammers dressed like hot chicks on Facebook… or wealthy Nigerian benefactors.

If you want to build a potent, responsive social network… the most important thing is to be social and show that you’re a real human. Communicate, comment, and show concern and care for people – and pace yourself to keep doing it. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way to build real trust and long term social capital!

What are you thoughts on winning people’s trust online? How about keeping relationships from evaporating once you’ve established them?

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Social Media Rockstar Runs on Thesis Theme for Wordpress

Thesis is an easy-to-customize, premium Wordpress theme that comes with full technical support. The beautiful style and pixel-perfect typography makes your writing look more polished and professional. If you’re serious about blogging and you want to focus more on your writing and do less hassling with PHP code… then check out the Thesis theme for Wordpress now! – Brett

Community is one of the most heavily used buzzwords in social media. The traditional dictionary lists multiple definitions… and colloquially it can mean very different things to different people. Groups that some people call an “amazing community” strike me as more of a clique or even a cult. Here’s my own personal taxonomy of terms for social groups:

Characteristics of a Community

A community is a relatively open group, with members who (try to) support each other.

A community is a group of people with a common location or interests, often with a shared sense of ownership. They might live in the same geographical area, hang out in the same (online) neighborhoods, or share a common profession or interest. A community is usually a relatively open group that exists to support or help all the members. If there’s no infrastructure or expression of collaboration / philanthropy – like a monthly meeting or an online forum – it’s not a bona fide “community.” At least not in my book.

The Wordpress community is a group of bloggers and programmers who collaborate to create code, tools, documentation and technical support for everyone else to use. The SEO and social media communities are comprised of people in the same professions… who publish blogs and plan events to connect and share their knowledge. Flickr is an online community of people who love photography & images. They share their pictures freely, encourage others to do the same, and they welcome new photographers… the more, the better.

• Membership criteria: Inclusive. Open to most with shared common interests.
• Barriers to Entry: Minimal. Only those members who prove to crazy / dangerous / offensive are shunned.
• Internal Politics: Tries to keep a semblance of order, keep things alive and constructive.
• Agenda: To make the world better for all the people in a certain online space.

Characteristics of a Clique

A clique is a smaller group people who have similar interests or personalities, who spend time together but who do not readily allow others to join them.

Two cliques face off in “West Side Story.”

A private company or an agency is a clique. They carefully screen all new members and only allow those with the most profitable or desirable characteristic to join them. They frequently deny
membership on very subjective matters like physical appearance, personality or politics (”who you know”). A closed private beta is a clique. So is an invite-only afterparty at a conference, or a “cool table” where the high-status people sit. Same with a circle of diggers who vote on each others stories, or tweeps who only RT their friends’ stuff.

• Membership criteria: Exclusive. Subjective. Open only to those who “click” with the existing members, or who can offer up something they want.
• Barriers to Entry: Many unspoken criteria serve to block undesired members from joining.
• Internal Politics: Oligarachy of the alpha (fe)males / most powerful members.
• Agenda: To enrich or satisfy the founders. To maintain an elite, high-quality, ego-gratifying environment.

Characteristics of a Scene

Unacquainted surfers competing for waves are more of “scene,” than a community.

A scene is a group of people who actively share a common interest or activity. A scene is usually less organized (and sometimes more competitive) than a community, and it’s larger than a clique. There’s a 419 e-mail fraud scene in Nigeria. There’s an large electronic music scene in Tokyo (and virtually none in Saudi Arabia). There’s a “technology scene” here in Boulder, CO – consisting of several overlapping open communities (public meetups, events), closed cliques & private organizations.

• Membership criteria: Inclusive. Anyone who participates is “part of the scene.”
• Barriers to Entry: Few.
• Internal Politics: Sometimes competitive. Most skilled / accomplished / well-connected people are most respected.
• Agenda: For each member to thrive in their own way.

Characteristics of a Cult

A religious cult is a system of religious veneration and devotion to a particular person or object. I define an online “cult” as a group of people who have one infallible leader, cause or over-riding belief. They tend to use social media soley to promote their one particular cause or agenda.

Ron Paul voters formed a social media cult / mafia in the 2008 presidential election.

MLMers on Twitter are a kind of a cult, who all share the aggravating fantasy that they can get rich if they spam their cookie-cutter message out to enough people. Liberal anti-Semites are a cult; they share a common, intense hatred for Israel and use social media almost exclusively to criticize the country and promote negative propaganda about it. The Ron Paul supporters, who registered for Digg and Reddit en masse to vote up pro-Ron Paul stories in the 2008 election, are an online “cult” with a human leader / savior.

• Membership criteria: Complete ideological devotion and/or financial commitment required.
• Barriers to Entry: Firmly closed to skeptics, heretics, non-believers.
• Internal Politics:Authoritarian mandates handed down by the guru, leader or “inner circle.”
• Agenda: To aggressively promote one particular ideology, business or political interest.

What Is Your Definition of Community?

Is a community really different than a scene or a clique – or is that just splitting hairs? I’m interested in your opinions (especially if you disagree with anything I wrote) and insights – so please freely let ‘em rip.

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Patrick Parise is the co-host of the Social Blade show, a weekly social media podcast. Patrick was known for being a well-connected, powerful Digg user – who promoted over 625 stories to the home page under several accounts (most recently Jenocide312). He stayed ‘under the radar’ and kept a low public profile until he got banned on Digg for the 3rd time, and recently decided to come out and share his knowledge with others. These days, you can follow him on Twitter…

Tell us a little about yourself?

Patrick podcasting at his dual-monitor workstation.

“I live in Lusby, Maryland, I have 4 boys and I’m recently divorced. I’m a business owner, but it has nothing to do with computers or technology. Digging and social media is a hobby – it’s what I do after work.”

You were actively involved in Digg and you were extremely successful at it. What motivated you so intensely?

“I just really enjoy it. I love finding a great story, and there’s a sense of accomplishment when it gets to the top. It’s fun when you’re friends with people and you can find the good stories first – and they’re like “Damn! How are you catching these already?” I’ve been offered some money (to digg stories) but I always turned it down – because I didn’t feel like it was worth the hassle. I get up and go to work every day and I stress over it – so one of the reasons I do social media is to escape from reality. When I come home, I wanna escape a little bit. Rather than getting drunk or falling asleep in front of a TV – I’d digg.

I had 3 strong accounts that got banned: Crackerpat, Brokebackcasket, Jenocide312. Cracketpat got banned because I was using the ‘Digg Friends Easy’ script (warning: do not use!) – which a lot of other people were using at the time. But once you’re banned on Digg, it’s forever. You can never come back. So my last 3 accounts got banned because they found it it was “me.”

What makes Digg more interesting than the more ‘mainstream’ sites, like Twitter and Facebook?

The home page of Digg.com is one of the most trafficked, competitive spaces in entire the social Web.

“It’s all about the stories. The constant stream of good content. It’s such a good way for me to pick up news from all different angles, whether it be high-tech security, computer industry news, faceplant videos on YouTube, celebrity gossip, or the strangest / wackiest stories you can imagine. And it’s filtered by the community – if I see something on the front page it’s because a lot of other people found it interesting, too.”

What feelings and emotions did you feel when you were digging?

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get into it. I’m sure everyone, including top diggers like MrBabyMan and Msaleem, still get a rush and get drawn to the excitement of it, too. However, I find it’s more frustrating when something really good doesn’t make the home page, than it is rewarding when something good does become popular.

There are certain milestones, like when you reach your 100th popular story, or when you pass a certain person. It was pretty cool when my last account got more home page stories than Kevin Rose’s account – which is kind of an honor – but sometimes he doesn’t submit anything for months. The week that I got banned (as BrokebackCasket), I was doing very well – I had 49 home page stories in one week.”

What kind of time do you have to put in to to build a power account?

image: Computer Choppers

“To start, you’re gonna have to spend, maybe, 6 hours a day. It would take a lot of digging people’s stories… but once you get enough of the right people following you and you get some momentum – you can do it it maybe an hour, or so. Nowdays you can only digg 200 stories a day, so you can’t really blind digg (vote on stories without reading them) like you used to. And that’s kind of missing the point me being there, which is to find the most interesting stuff.

It also takes a lot of behind-the-scenes networking. I have over 700 contacts on instant messenger. Probably 120 of them are green lights (active) at any time – all the way down into the red and the orange, I can’t even see them all.”

Do you know anyone who doesn’t spend hours digging friends’ stories that consistently does well on the site?

“No. Even the accounts where you look at ‘em and see that they only dugg 10 or 15 in the last 24 hours… those guys aren’t hitting the home page on a regular basis. They might break through occasionally – but that’s just Digg throwing those guys a bone to keep people’s attention. They can’t give out every single home page to people who submit a lot of good stuff – they have to keep the worker bees interested and involved.”

What percentage of active diggers do you suspect get some kind of financial compensation for endorsing stories?

“I’d say that there’s between 500 and 1500 daily diggers at any given time. Maybe 10% of them – or 50 to 100 of those (could be getting paid by someone) – it’s very possible. And you know, that catches up with you. For the bigger accounts, if they are getting paid, they sure aren’t telling anyone about it – because once you get to a certain level, you start to get haters. And those people would turn ya in. If anyone could prove it just a little, Digg support would have no choice but to ban them for being a ‘hired gun.’”

Does Digg.com arbitrarily ban people for just being “too good”?

“No. Why would they do that? Then MrBabyMan, and Msaleem and MakiMaki would be gone. Guys like LouieBaur would have been gone long ago – because guys like him are so ridiculously good at it. …They banned InsainCain02 they same day they banned my account, BrokebackCasket, because they found out I was a banned digger. And once you’re banned, you’re not allowed to come back.”

What kind of personalities do power users have?

“A lot of the people do it to pass time because it’s an escape from reality. Also… to be popular on Digg, you have to have a strong rapport with people and be friendly. And helpful. You’ve gotta be social and willing to give – help people with stuff, digg stories for people – and build up a good relationship with a lot of different people. You’ve really got to enjoy what you’re submitting or else you won’t be much good at it.”

What tools did you use for finding content and digging? Any tips or tricks?

1. Google Reader. I have all my sites loaded into there and I could go there this second and find 4, 5 or even 6 stories that should be ‘home page material.’ I can pass those out to my friends and 70% of them should hit the home page. Finding the right content just became second nature, for me.
2. Social Blade. Urgo’s site has incredible Digg analytics. You need to know that once you’ve dugg 199 stories, you need to stop. It also shows which sites are the most popular sources for home page stories, which diggers are most active, etc.
3. The Bigg Board by Brainnovate. This is an real-time dashboard for Digg that lets you track your stories, see where they are on the site, whether they break into ‘upcoming,’ etc. Some people digg way too much stuff and aren’t seeing any of the results that I am. So I’ve been helping a lot of new diggers learn how to do it right. And Bigg Board is the best tool to let me see exactly what’s happening with their stories.

What are some of the all-time greatest headlines or stories you remember?

The online Susan Boyle phenomena got a nice boost from one of Patrick’s submissions on digg.com

“I guess the best story I ever had was given to me by MrBabyMan – because some unknown user had just submitted it and it wasn’t gonna make the home page. It was a Susan Boyle video – way before she became popular. The YouTube video had less than 10,000 views when I submitted it. It went viral and the next Monday I got e-mails from The Daily Mail wanting to know how I’d discovered it. Then before ya know, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are tweeting about it. I didn’t make it go viral, it went viral by itself – but I just happened to be the power digger who ended up submitting it.”

Who are some people you think that have great social media skills or contributions to the community?

“The most influential person, to me, by far, was Diggboss. That guy has done wonderful things for me and for other people as well. He showed me everything – every trick you could possibly use – and he wanted nothing in return!

EmitStop (a 17-year old Web designer) does very, very well. He’s been around a lot longer than I have and he’s great a connecting with people and movies stories along. There’s a relatively unknown guy named Cancerkitty who finds the funniest articles – his stuff is just phenomenal and it just flies to the top. .”

What are your goals? At what point will you feel satisfied or feel like you’ve “made it”?

“ I don’t think I’ll ever be totally satisfied. I’m pretty family-oriented, so whenever all my kids are grown up, and are married and are living successful lives – then I’ll know I’ve done right. Money isn’t the most important thing. My kids are healthy, I’m grateful for what I’ve got, I’ve done well in social media – and I enjoy spreading it all out and helping people do well.

When not at work or doing social media coaching, Patrick coaches football and spends time with his kids.

Recently, I did a show with JD Rucker, Erin, Victor and Urgo- where we we interviewed the singer Josh Charles. All the money he makes from his song ‘Healing Time’ will go to rebuilding New Orleans after the hurricane – and we’re trying to raise a million dollars. It’s been 4 years since Katrina and a lot of people aren’t feeling the love, anymore, so much. So, by helping get the word out about important things like that, it feels pretty good…”

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