In blog comments, on Twitter, all over Facebook, Yelp, YouTube, and several other sites, we’ve been groomed to give our opinion. We spit it out everywhere. We share, rate, criticize, deride, praise, and everything in between. Forrester’s Ladder graphic suggests that critics are second on the content ladder, just below creators.

But if you look at the ecosystem, and what we’ve built, are we “starting conversations” or are we inviting commentary? And what’s the difference? To me, one is an exchange of knowledge, whereas the other is more of an end product. Make sense? Commenting and giving opinions becomes an “object” or “artifact” or “creation” of its own. See where I’m going?

So the question becomes: if we’ve built all these tools, these comment buttons, these like buttons, these “share and add notes” buttons, how is this impacting our interactions and our communication? Now that we’ve gone from not having a voice to having tools to give our opinion about everything, how does this change us? How does it impact how we interact with people? What does it mean to the larger ecosystem?

Photo credit Hashmil

Content is a means to deliver interest. It’s a gathering place for you and the people you hope to entertain/attract/educate/equip. That doesn’t make it the king.

Kings rule. Kings make hard decisions. Kings try to maintain the balance of the good of the country (you history buffs pipe down; it’s my story). Kings do have egos, by the way. It’s part of being kingly.

But content? That’s treasure. That’s salve. That’s wood for the fireplace around which great stories are told.

Work hard on content, but focus on relationships. Be a good king. Be a servant. Be a steward to your people.

And use content well.

What do you say?

For the rest of us, let’s talk about discipline and the blogger’s opportunity.

Every time you post, you build an opportunity. It might be for making business. It might be for sharing thought leadership. It might be the chance to build some new relationships. Mechanically, it might just be another attempt to gain better organic ranking from Google. But each post is an opportunity.

To obtain any kind of value in these opportunities requires discipline. Consider these points before each post.

Discipline and the Blogger’s Opportunity

• Show up – First, just be there. By writing a blog post on a regular schedule, your audience knows to expect you. They come to accept the flow of your efforts. Farmers have this relationship with their systems. It shows stewardship.
• Deliver value – Bring your best game as often as possible. We all have “barely functional” days, but more often than not, if we’re earning people’s respect, our efforts must be something of value to our reader. Writing about ourselves doesn’t cut it.
• Improve – Your great post from a week ago doesn’t give you a hall pass. Learn from those posts that don’t hit. Experiment. Read other great writers in your vertical and outside of it. Deconstruct what they’re doing and try to improve your game.
• Clarify your desire – If you’re seeking a specific result from a post, guide your audience to that result. If you’re seeking sales, make the call to action obvious. If you’re looking for comments, invite a dialogue at the end of your post. It’s yours to win.
• Do your part – Blogging isn’t all about your blog. Have you commented lately on others’ blogs? Are you sharing using the various social sharing tools? Be a good neighbor and help other bloggers by sharing, commenting, and adding value to the ecosystem.

If you’re wondering what it takes to get your blog up to the next level, to see business results from your effort, to grow your community, these are some points to consider for every post.

Need more advice? See My best advice about blogging. I’m here to help.

What do you think? How are you with discipline?

Photo credit chrisada

The site, Skip1.org is set up to allow people to build a profile and do repeat giving. For those of you who like challenges and game mechanics, there’s a leaderboard to see where your skipping stacks up. (That might not be for everyone, but lots of people are motivated by competitions, so I can see it working for them.)

Founder Shelene Bryan and I met a few months back in Orange County, CA, at the Brandtailers event put on by Cheril Hendry (who is helping with Skip1 as well), and we had a great conversation about how the cause intends to move things forward. Instead of telling you, however, I thought I’d use their own video to show you. If you can’t see the video, click here.

Now, if that works for you, and if it makes sense, let’s do two things next.

1. Go to Skip1.org, make an account, and skip something.
2. Tell your friends on Twitter, Facebook, your blogs, wherever, and let’s really spread the cause out there.

Fair? Let’s skip something.

Product

Depending on your product, you might want to think about these kinds of alignment questions:

• How does it share? – In software, this means adding features like “post this to Facebook.” In physical products and businesses, it might mean giving consideration to how the real-world experience can spread via the online tools. For instance, if I’m Steve Wright over at Jay Peak, I’m going to want to have a bunch of “rental” Flip cameras or Kodak’s Zi8 camera on hand, plus some simple instructions for YouTube tagging and Flickr groups.
• How do we collaborate? – In software, look at the difference between Flickr and Picasa. In the real world, determine if there’s some way to extend relationships between users. To keep with my ski resort example, I might throw together a Ning site, and invite EVERY guest to join a social network around their experience.

Price

With social software, maybe there’s a chance for “invite a friend and you both save X” kinds of pricing options. “10% off if you fan our Facebook page.” There are all kinds of ways to think about how you can align social tools to pricing. Woot.com made a great integration with Twitter. So did Dell Bargain Outlet. Your blog can have specials of the day or week posted there. There are tons of ways price aligns with social software.

Place (distribution)

Look how easy the social web makes cause marketing. Take blogging software, make a post about the cause, throw a ChipIn widget on there, and you’ve got the basics for a charity fundraising experience (technology-wise). Distribution is the web’s best talent. You can put things everywhere. You can build a simple presence framework and move information to where it’s needed. Place is the easiest of the Four P’s to align to the social media world. Make sense?

Promotion

The social web is the talk of the town because of promotion. It’s free and easy, right? Heh. Most people accidentally promote in very damaging ways. They haven’t learned how to promote without being “that guy”. But it’s true that these tools are the best tools for promotion ever.

Through my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter outposts, I get thousands of new readers and prospective clients every week. Thousands. I make new relationships that I wouldn’t have had before the land of blogging and all the other social tools. I use YouTube and I can podcast and I can make photos on Flickr. There are tons of ways to use these tools to promote and build community opportunities.

What’s Old is New Again

I lined up all the old fashioned marketing “Four P’s” to how social software can interact. I didn’t exactly lay out step-by-step plans, but maybe you can infer a bit from what we started with. You’ll notice something. The tools aren’t all that spectacular and amazing, except that they make performing certain tasks simpler than it used to be. Instead, the potential and the wonderment are all inside the human part of the equation.

What’s exciting about how social media and social software aligns with marketing is that there are new opportunities that far surpass the old methods for marketing, and that’s where the magic truly hides. Marketers do have to understand the tools, but more so, here’s a quick list of what else needs to be understood:

• From bullhorn to phone – Your message is no longer to be shouted, but to be socialized.
• From theater on the stage to theater in the round – Marketing is human again. Don’t stay “on message.” Stay connected to people.
• From millions, to the right 10,000 – Mass never worked well. It just did well enough. Find relationships that yield.
• From campaign to community – You’re in it for the long haul. Build awareness, reputation, and trust by being there.
• From exclusion to “one of us” – Your customers (b2b or otherwise) want to be included in the whole experience, not just to buy.

Truth be told, there are a dozen more things we could talk about in that list. But let’s start with those. You get the starting point. It looks easy, until the boss starts yelling at you for numbers and fast. Farmers can’t rush crops. You can’t join a gym a week before a wedding and drop five sizes. This is re-inventing stuff, not rehashing the old stuff with new line items.

You with me? What else do we have to cover here?

If you’re not yet subscribed to this blog, consider starting your free subscription today, as we’re going to cover even more of this in the coming weeks. You can receive it via email, or in your blog reader of choice. And thanks.

Photo credit wwarby

Note to iPhone fanboys: I don’t think this is an iPhone-killer as much as it’s another scoop out of Blackberry’s bucket. This beats the crap out of the Storm, and probably also the Tour. I think the Palm Pre will also get smooshed a bit by this phone, too.

Let’s look at what it can do. (And quick note: I bought this phone with my own cash. This is not a sponsored review.)

For another perspective, I think Bryan Sherman’s reviews are all pretty worthwhile, too.

Easy Keyboard and Touch Screen Input

The Droid has both the ability to input information via a touchscreen, similar to the iPhone, but there’s also a slide-out keyboard. The keys feel flat instead of bubbled like a BlackBerry, so you can’t exactly type blindly (BB users know what I mean), but what I do like about the keyboard is that the special characters make a lot more sense, placement wise. There’s also a five-position controller that you can use to scroll around if touch isn’t getting you precisely where you need to go. The touch screen, when just using that keyboard, worked just fine for me, too.

Applications

Honestly, the real war will be fought and won over a few spots: the network and applications. I’ll get to the network part, but I’ll start by saying I’m already pretty impressed by the applications. The commercials for Droid say there are over 10,000 apps already (these are Google widgets and android-specific apps). I had no trouble finding pretty much all my iPhone apps for a Droid version, including a beta of my favorite note app, Evernote, SnapTell visual product search, a Twitter client, and more.

Most surprising of the apps was Google’s new Maps with Navigation. I clicked this baby on and suddenly, I had turn-by-turn instructions given in a typical GPS voice, with traffic condition overlays and more. When I say this app pretty much makes the phone a must, it could replace my Garmin (I know that both Garmin and TomTom are a bit uncertain what Google’s new app means for their future).

I’ll review other apps as I get into them, and if they make sense to share with you. For now, suffice to say that I was very impressed with their selection, with one exception.

I had to download an app to close apps that were running on my phone.

What? Unless I missed a really simple instruction in the manual that I didn’t read, that strikes me as utterly silly. (Someone may come here and correct me.)

Google Integration

The Droid seamlessly integrated with my multiple Gmail accounts, including my @chrisbrogan.com accounts. It also integrated with my Google Calendar, my Google Voice, and all the other Google apps I run. That was delicious to experience. Having these apps run native on the phone makes them even faster, and even more slick. The calendar, for instance, runs even faster than the web-based version (though I wish it had custom views like the web version).

I’m very impressed with that integration. This, if you’re a Google fan, is a great reason to consider the phone.

The Network

I’ve been using AT&T for over a year now, and switching back to Verizon was a breath of fresh air. The web browsing is markedly faster on the Verizon 3G network. Calls stayed up on the three times I made a longer call while driving. In short, it just worked. iPhone fanboys, you have to admit that’s a weakness.

The network might be the thing that sells more people into trying out the Droid.

The Phone

The phone is loud and clear. The contacts and dialing mechanisms and stuff remind me a lot of the iPhone. It’s really simple and easy to use, and I don’t have anything bad to say about it.

The Camera

I haven’t shot a lot of photos yet with the Droid. The few I took were in poor lighting conditions, but even that was a change, because hey, it has a FLASH. Oooh, modern technology has equipped the Droid cameraphone with something that other cell phones have had for 9 years, but that has eluded my other previous smartphone of choice. Oh, and the camera is 5 megapixels. It also shoots video. You’ll see a test video of that soon enough here, but why rush things?

I’m pretty impressed with the quality. I also used the app PixelPipe (also available for iPhone and also my Mac desktop) on my Droid so that I could shove photos to as many sites as I wanted all at once. (A worthwhile app to get).

What’s Missing – iTunes

The most obvious app/feature missing is something that emulates the iTunes experience of an iPhone. There’s a music player, a video player, and a lot of 3rd party apps (Pandora for Android is quite noteworthy).

But there’s no store where I can blow $1.29 every time a whim strikes me. I’ve got several gigabytes of media on my iTunes account and on my laptop, and I’ve yet to try and port it over, but I’m reasonably sure that won’t really go anywhere. In the absence of that, why hasn’t Verizon led with a similar-to-iTunes or even a better Amazon integration? (You can correct me here if I missed something).

Overall: A Keeper

Today’s Day 2 with the Droid, so let’s not get crazy here. But so far, I’m really impressed. I think it’s a great phone, and will definitely give Blackberry users something to think about. I’m not as convinced that there will be a mass exodus from iPhone over to Droid, but then again, some of the other frustrated masses might just give it some thought.

For me, it’s not as much about a religion. I wanted a phone that worked better than what I was using. The iPhone raised the bar on what I was willing to accept. Thankfully, I feel the Droid meets and/or exceeds those standards.

Have you tried it? Are you considering it?

If you can’t see the video, click HERE to watch it.

What will happen? You could lose control. You might crash. You might smash into someone doing the same thing going the other way.

Or you could make it through unscathed, exhilarated, and ready to race into what’s next.

Every move I made with my own career can be summed up by stepping on it when I saw the crossroads coming. Sometimes, I skidded off the road. Sometimes, I made a wrong turn (don’t ask Kat about how OFTEN I make wrong turns). But all in all, it’s worked well as a tactic.

I dunno. The alternative to stepping on it is to jam the brakes.

photo credit emio me

**UPDATE: Scroll down for the “making of” video**

Here’s the video review:

Can’t see the video? Click here.

If you want to learn more:

New: Making-Of Video

As almost every comment presumed I was soon to kill every other person on the road, I thought I’d show you how I shot it. Still, was it safe? I’ve probably done safer things than shoot a video while driving, but hopefully, you’ll get a better sense of what I saw and what controls I had while shooting it. If you’re still not pleased, it’s okay. I do lots of things you don’t like. I just don’t usually film them.