My favorite part is when Brad Pitt and Edward Norton start shifting from just fighting into putting together a nationwide (international?) presence. Wherever you see a black eye or a missing tooth, it’s someone involved with Fight Club, and they all treat each other a little more special than they do the general public, because they’re in something together. It’s a movement of sorts, and that’s what author Chuck Palahniuk was exploring at some parts: how group activities for men have changed (evaporated!) in more recent years.

Here’s the thing: in some ways, what we’ve got going with social media feels like that secret club. It feels like we’re part of something.

The guy in the picture is Steve Wright, VP of marketing (or something like that) up at Jay Peak Resort in Vermont. When he caught some of my tweets that I was in the area, he dropped me a line and said I should swing by for a ride on their tram, and a little lunch.

Steve was so friendly, and so kind, and the ride in the tram (up 4000-ish feet into the heavy clouds hugging the mountain) was a blast. Lunch was very kid-friendly (important to parents on the road), and it was just a fun, unplanned adventure.

The Secret Fight Club

Basketball professional and businessman Shaquille O’Neal ( @the_real_shaq on Twitter) tweeted this message out famously many months back: “To all twitterers , if u c me n public come say hi, we r not the same we r from twitteronia, we connect.” Other celebrities like MC Hammer are so real that when you finally meet and spend time with them (I’ve hung out briefly at TechCrunch40 and also at CES in Vegas), they’re just as human as anyone else.

Podcasters and bloggers regularly reach out and do great things for each other. They share expenses to attend conferences. My friend, Zane Aveton famously tweeted her way into a ride and lodging to attend SXSW this past March.

This is really astounding, if you think about it, the amount of good will that we pass around in this space. And it’s not relegated to “big names,” whatever that means any more. It’s everyone. People DO things for each other in this space. They give first and give often.

(That last part is the secret sauce: fail to give and you’ll find yourself in a karmic imbalance that usually corrects itself quite obviously.)

I, for one, am always excited about it. I love contributing in my own special ways to the secret fight club. I love giving to causes, helping raise for other causes, and finding ways to get more and more people into jobs that build this space up.

Are You Part of the Secret Fight Club?

Think about it. Are you giving to the secret fight club? Are you building small powerful networks? Are you helping others find work, or sharing whatever your professional cool offering is? Are you the Adam Wallace or Brian Simpson of your organization, offering a plate of free bacon at the bar?

It’s SO easy, so rewarding, and a hell of a lot of fun. Join in.

What’s your contribution?

The Secret Bonus Round

(I added this in after the first push of the post, so folks who only get one RSS copy might not even SEE this.)

What if YOU started something that identifies you as part of the SFC? What if YOU figured out a way to pass around the symbol, such that others knew you were contributing? Maybe it doesn’t have to be as explicit, but then again, wouldn’t a secret signal, sign, symbol, whatever, be cool?

Blog some ideas, and let’s pass this “secretfightclub” tag and idea around a bit. Cool?

I’ve been trying out Posterous after reading about it on Steve Rubel’s blog. I’m using it to capture my vacation.

Today, I tried switching to HTML on the website to embed a YouTube video. (Okay, I just lost a few of you, but basically, I was adding a video the “by hand” way). No go. It wouldn’t be recognized.

Solutions: 1.) use the bookmarklet and push the button while on the YouTube site, or 2.) email the URL to Posterous and let THEM do it.

Okay, fine with a YouTube video. The web has TONS of widgets and applets and things that are just simple copy/paste efforts. Posterous is great and handling the simple stuff and I enjoy it as a very simple, lightweight blogging platform, but I’m a little ticked that I can’t muscle down just a hair and add an embed code.

Just thoughts on a service. Am I wrong?

I’m on vacation and I’ve had at least one post a day the whole time. How? Simple: I scheduled them. I wrote the posts ahead of time, and had enough in reserve that I could have some days of bliss without worrying about things. This isn’t tricky. It just takes some prior planning.

In Chris Penn’s case, he built a project that’s pretty easy to research and put up. In my case, I just blogged like I normally do, but I wrote an extra 3 posts a day for five days, so that I had two weeks of content. (Yes, that’s a lot of work, but you can do it at whatever pace works for you).

The one thing I don’t recommend doing is stopping for your vacation. I mean, you can slow down, but don’t let your media slow down. Why? Because your community and/or your audience are quick to find replacements, because they come to rely on your media as part of their diet, because every post is an advertisement for what you do best.

This isn’t a how-to post; it’s a recommendation. Keep your media making alive. We notice the difference.

The intent was to have a big huge page of links featuring all of you, because I truly believe the blog is about you and our interactions together. The thing is, it’s just a lot of work to manage, and I don’t see hardly ANY clicks to it any month. No one really looks in there for anything.

Truly, you are important to me just by visiting here. I’m sorry that that page didn’t do as much for you as I’d hoped. We’ll find other ways to promote you.

Thanks.

Today, in front of me, I saw a small miracle. Rob was looking for his keys. He’d looked a bunch of times. A moment into it, he says, “Oh, why didn’t I do this first?” He closed his eyes a moment, opened them, and found the keys within a few moments.

I said, “Um, what’d you just do?”

He said, “Prayed to St. Anthony.”

I said, “You prayed?”

Yep.

And here’s the prayer:

Saint Anthony!
Saint Anthony!
Please come around
Something’s been lost
That cannot be found

I realize this is a focusing exercise. I realize the prayer did or didn’t contribute. I don’t care.

To me? A miracle happened, a small one, and I’m impressed by how things like this work.

General

• Question: How do you follow so many people?

• Answer: I don’t see every tweet you make. I have several searches on terms that interest me at given times. For instance, when I’m visiting a place, I search on variations of the city and region name, to get to “know” some of the folks in my area, and to be alerted to local news. I have searches running on other marketing and emerging media topics. I also have limited groups built into my Seesmic Desktop client. I do read every @ reply and mention of my name, as well as all my direct messages.

• Question: I sent you a request to retweet something and you didn’t (or you did). What motivates you to retweet something?

• Answer: I receive about 45-60 retweet requests a day (as of July 6th, 2009) in direct message. They range from lame requests for blog traffic to boring blogs that can’t get visibility on their own, to really important requests that would benefit charities and causes. Sometimes, they’re just pointers to decent posts that might have slipped past me in the normal stream, but that the person believes my audience will like. I retweet based on a few things: 1.) is your only interaction with me to ask me to retweet things? (if yes, then I’m probably not going to do it). 2.) have you asked me frequently in the past while? (you’re burning me out). 3.) is it really something my community wants to know about? 4.) do I like what you’ve done? If I can answer no to 1 and 2, and yes to 3 and 4, you’re golden. Sometimes, I can’t just because I’m busy.

• Question: I sent you an @reply or a direct message and you didn’t respond.

• Answer: I’m sorry. I try to reply to as many messages as I can. On any given day, I average well over 75% @replies in my stream. Sometimes, I get pulled away from the computer. Other times, I just can’t dig back in and respond. I see every one, and I do try to respond to as many as I can. You matter, and it sucks when I can’t reply directly. Stick with me. I try my best.

• Question: I saw another chrisbrogan Twitter account. Is that you?

• Answer: There are several fake chrisbrogan Twitter accounts run by people who have a comic angle on something related to me. Around my birthday, someone launched @birthdaybrogan. There has also been @britchrisbrogan, @antichrisbrogan, and several other variations. None of them are me. I manage @chrisbrogan. With well over 80,000 followers (in July 2009), I think that’s enough to manage. Don’t you?

How I Use Twitter

• Question: You’ve called Twitter the next telephone and the next dialtone. What’s that about?

• Answer: I have two sources for this. Marcel Lebrun, CEO of Radian6, has this thing about the social phone. He likes to say, “The social phone is ringing. Are you answering?” My interpretation of this is that Twitter (and a few other services) have become as important as dialtone to business and communication in general. My other inspiration is Jeff Pulver, godfather of the VoIP generation, and someone who knew lots about presence and dialtone before anyone else thought to apply it to the computer world. Simply: I think Twitter is a service as useful as the telephone was to the last 100 years.

• Question: You talk to a lot of people on Twitter with @replies. Why not use direct messages?

• Answer: I like tweeting out in the open unless the conversation is private for two reasons. One, I like to share ideas with many, in case someone else can chime in and add something of value. MOST times, people know more than me. I prefer sharing @replies so that others might learn and pitch in.

• Question: You’re on Twitter a lot. Don’t you have a job?

• Answer: I sure do. I am on and off Twitter throughout the day at many strange hours. I’ve actually cut down tweeting a bit, believe it or not ( the stats are here), but I use it a lot for different reasons: checking in with people, asking questions, learning, and driving awareness to things that matter to me. I love Twitter for those reasons. I love asking people things.

• Question: I want as many followers as you. How do I get them?

• Answer: Heck, if it’s just numbers you’re into, there are tons of software out there now that robot-loads your account. I do mine the old-fashioned way. I follow back people who follow me. I don’t have robot answers, but the human answer is: be helpful, share, communicate, use @replies a lot. That’s it. That’s how I did it.

• Question: You get all these responses for everything you tweet and I don’t. It’s not fair.

• Answer: I’m just like you. We all start somewhere. Believe me, it’s a meritocracy. There’s no “man” holding you down. Now, you’re never going to surpass the big names and the robot mongers, so don’t try. But really, get to know some folks, talk, make some value, and you’ll get there. I don’t pay attention to all the crazy stuff. I don’t care who ranks higher in whatever. It’s not why I’m there. Make it YOUR Twitter.

Tools of the Trade

• Question: Which apps are you using these days?

• Answer: I’m using Seesmic Desktop on my laptop, and Tweetie on my iPhone. I use SocialToo.com for auto-following people back. I use Twitter Search all the time. I like tools like Wordle to analyze what people are talking about in a visual way.

• Question: Inside Twitter, do you use Search, and Hashtags, and @replies?

• Answer: I sure do. All the time. I use Search more than I use straightforward Twitter. I love following hashtags during events. A great web-based app to do that is TweetGrid. I think there are others. I know of that one.

What Else Do You Want to Know?

This is your question and answer page. What do you want to know that I haven’t covered? Again, this is about how I tweet, not how YOU should tweet. That’s another matter.

Questions?

Photo credit mandj98

I just added a few more things to my own personal Alltop. It’s a feature Guy Kawasaki added to his service so that I can pick and choose which of his many aggregated sources I want to check in on easily. Mine has a lot of marketing and PR sources in it. Yours can have whatever you like, maybe poker? (Don’t forget to check out my Dad’s poker blog, if you like poker.)

Just browsing My Alltop this morning gave me three new tweaks to my own marketing strategies. I added the ideas to an Evernote file for later.

I still use Google Reader and RSS for several hundred other sources, but Alltop is a good way to get a fast glance and pick up some ideas. Have you tried it?

Just read this post on Mashable saying that Google confirms they’ll have an operating system for computers out for late 2010. This is a huge move. A new OS isn’t to be taken lightly, and yet, today I was having the conversation with Rob Hatch that neither of us really use native apps that often. We live in the browser.

This doesn’t hit for another year, so let’s not all go crazy. And yet, think about this.

MSFT has decades of experience. Apple does, too. Linux isn’t a big slouch.

Would you go full-Google?

Photo credit MikeBaird

I can’t sleep because I’m working on next moves, next steps, the next appropriate arc for me to take, for me to share with you, for us to work on together. I can’t sleep because if I stop, the next big thing will wash over me and I won’t be on top of the wave; I’ll be at the bottom.

This is all such utter bull. You can sleep. I can sleep.

What I can’t do, however, is stop dreaming.

You don’t have to build relationships to sell things. McDonalds is sinking over $100 Million USD into their McCafe program, because they expect sales of those products to account for $1 Billion in sales. Do you think they give a rat’s anus about getting to know me? Not at all. Will their efforts work? I’m guessing yes. Even if they miss that Billion mark, it will be a pretty decent ROI in the end for their efforts. (We like coffee.)

But relationships are a choice. I can choose to build relationships because I want a longer term sales experience with you. For instance, I was talking with @moniquewade on Twitter, and she was asking me if the Trust Agents community on Facebook was just a way to market the book. I replied, “The idea is this: relationships sell better than typical marketing. If you are PART of Trust Agents, it’s better than selling.”

I went on to say, “Exactly so. I’m not selling a book. That’s just the byproduct, the souvenir. I’m sharing access and interaction. For free!”

My Marketing Mindset for Trust Agents

First, pay attention: I’m talking about me, my marketing mindset, and specifically that which relates to Trust Agents, my upcoming book with Julien.

In thinking about marketing this book, Julien and I built a Trust Agents community over on Facebook. It (like a lot of what I do) is an experiment. We wondered if people wanted to talk about trust and how different trust is in the online world. As of this writing, we have over 1500 people participating in conversations, and sharing their thoughts.

Why bother, if all I want to do is sell a book? But that’s it. I don’t want to sell a book. I want to build a relationship that lasts much longer than a book. Yes, I’d love it if you buy a book. Julien and I worked very hard on it. We put a lot of our beliefs into it. We’ve spent months working on it, and we’d love for you to buy anywhere from one to 200 copies. But that’s not the point.

We want to know you. We want to talk with you. We want you to call us out when we’re wrong, and to tell us how to improve. We want to hear how you’re doing, and we want to interact.

Why? Because we feel that a trust agent uses the secret skill that we call being a “Human Artist,” and that knowing how best to build relationships of value is something best demonstrated instead of just being this thing we wrote about in a book.

Relationship marketing takes lots more effort, but I’m banking on the fact that you and I have much more between us than your $20 for our book.

Is One Better Than the Other?

Hell no, and punch the person who tells you it’s all about the relationships. When I drive into McDonalds, I order a large iced coffee with milk and one Splenda. I don’t care what McDonalds does wrong or right. They don’t care about me. It’s just a transaction, and it works just great. I am VERY aware of their new ad campaign, and I’m sure it’s driving more sales. It works great for them.

Could I sell Trust Agents without building relationships? Hell yes. There are lots of ways to mechanically get that book moved. Is that how I’ve chosen to do it? No. I much prefer the relationships.

The point is simple: choose. If you want to build relationships as part of your marketing, that’s very do-able. If you want to have a more transactional approach, that’s fine, too. But don’t attempt relationships and then hope for transactional returns.

And always be clear on your ask. If you’re building relationships ONLY to market, that’s just a longer haul transaction. Be clear if you’re asking someone for something, or if you’re just making friends. It helps on all fronts.

Thoughts From You?

What’s your take?