Allow me to get this one out of the way:

Content is King

Almost seems like a New Media cliche now but it’s only because it’s the fact. It has been forever and it always will be. We will watch what we like, not because it happens to be on.

The TV is just a screen

But it’s not the only screen. Most new phones play video. iPads. Computers. These are the most prevalent and the most obvious. I watched the first two seasons of LOST on the original Video iPod. It’s a tiny screen compared to the “giant iPod Touch” known as an iPad (yuk yuk), but I enjoyed the content and it was a great experience. It fit my needs because I was living in my car for 15 months at the time. (making a good living mind you, it’s a long story) While I’m writing this I’m watching/listening-to “STOMP Live” on Hulu Plus on my iPad. And this is a great experience. But I could just as easily be watching it on my computer screen. I don’t own a TV.

Watching is getting expensive

I enjoy TV as much as the next guy but I limit it because I have too much to do. Actual TV shows I keep to just a few at a time. But I’m getting off topic.

Watching is getting expensive because everyone wants a piece of the pie. Back when I had cable, I paid $40 a month (I think). Now I have an internet connection for $40 a month. There is certainly plenty to watch for free, but great content isn’t free. Which is just fine by the way. We all have to make a living. Problem is the specialization. I’m trying out Hulu Plus. $10 a month. I have Netflix for movies, $9 a month. I just watched the Tour de France for three weeks on streaming video from Versus. It was awesome. It played fantastically on my iPad. It cost me $30 for that one race.

All of the sudden I’m paying more for TV-ish content than I ever have in my life and something tells me this isn’t going to go away any time soon.

Where do you seen TV going and are you willing to pay for it to come over the Web?

I’ve not talked about it here, but my big project right now is Web Strategy for the John McCain 2010 Senate re-election campaign.

I love this gig. It mixes two of my biggest passions, Social Media, and politics. I’ve learned so much more about both it is ridiculous and I need to start talking about it here more.

I was reminded today, in a huge way, about being authentic. You see, marketing has campaigns, politicians have campaigns, and there are similarities, but there are also huge differences. For example, to my knowledge, when a company is holding an event, the competing company doesn’t show up with video cameras to film it. This happens in politics regularly. For example, not long ago, I took this photo of the campaign manager of our primary opponent at a Town Hall hosted by Senator McCain.

This brings us to today. Between dropping by two fire stations, Senator McCain hosted two Town Halls and there was another prominent staffer of our opponent there to film. I was making small talk with him afterwords and said, “So, what horrible things were said that will end up on your blog?” He replied to a statement the Senator (not a poor man by any measure) had just made in the last few minutes, “I hate rich people just like everyone else.” So offending staffer replied, “‘I hate rich people,’? what was that all about? haha I know it was just tongue-in-cheek.” Which it entirely was.

So not much time had to go by when I see this tweet by tongue-in-cheek-statement-mentioning-opponent-staffer, “#AZ Sen McLame @ Tempe Town hall 2day: “I hate rich people.” Wait, is he running in the DEM primary? #azright#azgop#tcot“

Wait.. what?!

And this got me thinking more about authenticity. I don’t recall a time I was faced with such blatant disregard for what you truly think and what you say in public. In fact when I was talking to this individual that followed us around today, I kind of liked him. He was personable, friendly. But then to turn around and tell the Internet what he told them is inexcusable. I have altered my opinion of this individual 180 degrees and he is now in the untrusworthy human category.

I don’t have to go on and on and explain why you need to be true to yourself whether online or off. This story does it for me. In our commercials, there is a line that is always repeated, it says, “Character Matters” This individual’s actions tell me what kind of person he is, and by association, the person he represents.

Character matters. Integrity matters. Authenticity matters.

A topic I think a lot about is what motivates people to action. For some crazy reason, I’ve thought of this separately from this blog, but no more. Motivating people is what we are all trying to do. Especially those of us in New Media. So imagine my joy yesterday when I happened across someone who thinks smartly about such things to the point of writing books on them and doing TED talks on the subject.

Enter, Dan Pink.

Since yesterday I’ve been reading his blog, watching his presentations, and probably going to go buy a few of his books.

Non-monetary motivation. This is the thing everyone is striving for. Some have figured it out, i.e. Farmville. I play a game on my Droid called Pirate Wars. The game was free, but I’ve put more money into it than any other paid app from the Marketplace. Motivation.

So I’ve broken the ice about this topic here. I expect to have plenty more to say.

Watch Dan’s TED talk.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Happening on September 14th. Kevin Spidel (@kspidel)  and I are talking about how Social Media is being used to in political campaigns. (I don’t talk about it here much, but I’m a Web Strategist for John McCain’s 2010 Senate Campaign) Check out JoinAZIMA.org for more.

And coming even sooner, Scottsdale Camp on April 24th at SkySong. The schedule is that in a room to be determined, tentatively at 3pm, I’ll be talking about Activating Passionate Groups. Probably. :)

See you there!

This is an update to my post from earlier this month, “Do you own YOU?”

You have to own your name(?)

I argued in that post that everyone should own their own name.  Well I’ve given that some thought, and have decided that is not ultimately true.  And truth be told, I knew it when I was writing the linked post.  But I had decided that nothing is better than owning your own name through a URL and making that the basis of your online identity and brand.

Ok, so not your own name, a name

While I still argue that owning your own name is best, there is still a little wiggle room for an online persona that is not your actual name.  I know quite a few females that are nervous about their names being known on the Internet.  Additionally your name may be taken, and heaven help you if you are John Smith, right?  There can only be one John Smith online, so if you are John Smith number two or nervous about using your real name, you have a couple of options: make a name from your name, or create a unique name altogether.

By making a name from your name I mean you can be JohnS, JSmith, or SmittyJay.  Something memorable that works that nobody else has.

By creating a unique name altogether I’m saying you can be something completely unlike your own name.  Something like Perez Hilton, or Technosailor.

I’m still giving thought to having two names floating around in the Internet ether.  My instincts tell me not to, but logic tells me you should push your name.  For this example I’m going to use ProBlogger.net.  The author of ProBlogger is Darren Rowse, but I can never for the life of me remember his name.  I read his book, I read his blog all the time, to me, he is problogger.  His Twitter is @problogger, not his name, one of his other blogs, TwiTip.com has the statement, “TwiTip is edited by Darren Rowse from ProBlogger Blog Tips and is all about Twitter.”  As you can see from the statement on TwiTip, Darren knows he is more defined by the name of his blog than by his own name.  This is why my instinct tells me Darren should stick being problogger, and not confuse his brand by pushing his real name as well.

Staking your claim

The two items that are criticle for creating a persona these days are the domain name and the Twitter account.  If either are taken, keep looking.

Having said that, the one constant is the domain name, but something will replace Twitter eventually.  The .com is obviously best, but there are many options now, .me, .name, .us, .org, .net, and a few more I’m sure that aren’t coming to mind right now.

The worst thing you could do

Building your online presence around your company would be the worst thing you can do, in my humble opinion.  I gave some examples in the first post of people that have maintained their own identity even through several companies.  On top of that, a company might just be looking to hire based on the network they can bring with them.  If your network is tied to your old company,   you are pretty much hosed and have to mostly start over if you do move to another company.

This post is was going to be a part of a series of posts about Social Media in the Arizona State Government inspired by the potential of incoming Governor Jan Brewer’s administration to use Social Media much more prominently than has been done up until now.  More info on brewertransition.org & twitter.

Scratch that!  That is what I was GOING to put at the top of each post and starting writing about Social Media in Government.

But then I realized I would be getting off topic of my newly on topic blog :)  So this one post is probably all you are going to see of this.  I started a new blog on the topic at SocialMediaInGovernment.com.

It’s basically what I do here for business and Social Media, I’m doing over there for government and Social Media.  There are a lot of cross overs, so I think each will inspire the other to a certain extent, but there is stuff that doesn’t cross over, and I don’t want to alianate either side.

So please check it out if that would entertain you, otherwise, back to our regularly scheduled blogging…

The Social Media Expert Question Posted using ShareThis

I was hoping ShareThis would post the video, but alas, it did not, so let’s just roll with it.  Click the link to see the video, or check it out on Facebook.

I’m not going to add much to this, but I did just recently mention CC in a previous post, and this video seems to have picked up a lot of traction in a short amount of time.

It’s common sense to CC, and it’s common sense to me, but Social Media puts a notion in people that they can become an expert in it with a perception in no time at all, rather than being an actual expert.  If you watched the video, you will see that CC says it simply takes hard work and just doing it.  Just like how to become an expert in anything else.  I’ve been immersed in Social Media since 2005, and I’m still learning new things constantly, but I’m four years ahead of everyone else just starting now.  That’s a pretty big gap.  And CC will be the first to tell you that if you think you are an expert in Social Media, you need to re-evaluate the term expert.  IMHO, there are very few experts in this field, and by very few, maybe 3 or 4.  Many others may be up there, but can’t call themselves an expert. (apologies for the vagueness of that statement, I’ll explain more later)

That’s it, just a few thoughts on what CC said.  Have an opinion?  I’d love to hear it.

I’m reading the news this morning, and two things really collided in the metaspace between my ears.  Who owns YOU?

Part 1

Let me set this up… I’m not as old school Internet as some people my age, I got on in 1993 with a 14.4 modem on a 386 33Mhz computer.  I know, I’m a noob.  Back then, everyone had a handle, like Acid Burn and Zero Cool from Hackers.  I thought I was genius, I was “amaddeus” with two D’s.

Then came Social Media, and I realized that nobody cared who amaddeus was, I needed to be my name, control my brand that is my name.  You can be an handle, but BE thand handle.  I decided to not split being my name some places, and a handle in others.  Naturally for me, the first thing I did was register jeremyvaught.com, jeremyvaught.net, and jeremyvaught.org.  And a year ago I got jeremyvaught.tv (a work in progress).  I own me.  The other 5 Jeremy Vaughts I’ve met on Facebook are nameless.  I registered my kids names so they will have them when they are older.  It is important to own you.

Part 2

Layoffs.  They are everywhere.  Are you branded by your company?  From the paragraphs above, you know my stance on that.  Don’t let yourself be branded by your company.  If you want to blog about your company and what you do, don’t be XavierAtXcompany.com, although I see that kind of thing all the time, be YOU.  What happens to Xavier when he gets laid off, or moves on for his own reasons?  He loses his entire audience.  Be company-proof.

Examples

There are plenty of exampls out there, here are a few.

Christopher S. Penn Chris lives a breathes financial aid for college students which is his day job.  He has been with one company, as far as I know, for as long as I’ve known him and known of him.  He has used his name to position himself a leader in that space, and the company the works for, a leader in that space.  If Chris left tomorrow to go to another company, his audience and reputation will follow him where ever he goes.

Scott Monty I first heard of Scott doing silly Simpson’s voices on his company podcast when he was at Crayon.  I thought he was a bit goofy, apparently you can be goofy and know your stuff.  Scott eventually moved on from Crayon to run Social Media for Ford Motor Company.  I’m sure in no small part to his personal brand equity he has built.

C.C. Chapman Another Crayoneesta who’s brand has withstood change.  I first learned about C.C. when he was heading up the Digital Marketing something or other at Babson Business College and he was the host of his music podcast, Accident Hash.  C.C. was part-time with a pioneering podcast company who lost it’s way, and at Babson, started a new podcast about digital marketing podcast called Managing the Grey, left Babson to join the new company, Crayon, and then left that to start his own company, The Advance Guard.  But what is the constant there?  C.C. Chapman

Ron Ploof Not as dramatic as CC, but started his blog, RonAmok.com, to talk about his lessons learned in trying to get his fortune 500 company to embrace New Media.  He was seemingly making strides, when he was given a pink slip.  But without missing a beat, Ron had built his brand equity around RonAmok, and launched on his own to be a New Media Consultant and is doing quite well.  Ron didn’t let the company own him, Ron owned Ron.

Bringing it all back together

What got me thinking about all this is a story on Yahoo! News about layoffs and book publishers Simon & Schuster and Random House.  The story talks about industry heavyweights getting moved around and moved out.  They may get by on their reputations, but what about those that aren’t the heavyweights, do they have enough reputation, have they been building it?

The second part of this is there is an announcement by CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Michael Hyatt.  Michael owns Michael.  The story quotes his blog which is MichaleHyatt.com.  I went to his blog, and he has a facebook profile, is on Twitter, LinkedIn, and shares some posts he reads on Google Reader.

Wrapping it up

Own your brand.  If you don’t at this moment, you better do it by this afternoon.  If you don’t own you, somebody else will.

I leave you with Gary Vaynerchuk discussing owning your .com or .tv name.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This blog is written by me, Jeremy Vaught.  I have spent years pondering exactly what this blog should accomplish, and I have finally figured it out.

What you have seen up until now

Chaos, basically.  Whatever I wanted to write about, I threw it down here.  I have written about trips I’ve taken, what I’m doing with my kids, and before this blog, I did it for years on other blogs that have since faded away.  I has gained me a small loyal audience of friends a family, and a few people I have met at conferences along the way.

What you will see going forward

I have been giving a lot of thought to the look of the blog and changed it quite a bit lately.  But mostly, I have given a lot of thought as to what the blog is going to say.  And what it is going to say is how and why your business should be using Social Media.  I’m not even going to look for the exact words to define what this space will be.  But starting December 2008 and into 2009 and beyond, it’s what Social Media can do for you and your company.

You like the personal stuff?

If that’s the case, I’ll be posting the stuff that I can’t put here anymore, over on personal. jeremyvaught.com.  This site is professional, that site is whatever I want to put there.  I always felt the pull both ways, but the professional won out on this site, and the personal won too.

I’m excited about this new direction, I’m excited to be focused and have a place to talk about what I’m doing in my consulting business.  Check the sidebar, I have links for everyone who needs to find me and hire me. :)

If you have suggestions?  Comments?  Criticisms?  I would love to hear them…

Look out Chris Brogan, I’m coming for you.

I love conferences <3

I love attending them because of three things. The people I meet, the people I already know that I catch up with, and the panels/speakers I get to attend and learn from. All three of these help me to think of things in a new way and motivate me. This should be it’s own post at some point, so know until that time, I love conferences.

The Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference has really been great. I’m writing this paragraph as I’m sitting at a table next to Gary Vaynerchuk, Heather Herr, and Sally Strebel. All really great people that fall into the category of people I get to catch up with that I already know.  But have no fear, I also met plenty of new people and caught some fantastic presentation.  Below I am highlighting those presentation that I did catch.

I was waiting to put this out hoping there would be video for all of the sessions since there were professional cameras recording, but all I can find are the amateur videos taken with pretty horrible audio.  So I’m posting anyway.

Bill Reichert and Howard Lindzon

The first session of the day was Bill Reichert and Howard Lindzon. Bill talked about the “Future of the Future”, a really great talk, and Howard had a fantastic talk where he said at one point, “A business is no longer too big to fail, but you should be too small to fail.”

Derek Neighbors, Andrew Hyde, and Dan Gillmor

The next session I attended was a panel entitled, “The Climate for Startups” manned by Derek Neighbors of Gangplank, Andrew Hyde of Startup Weekend, and Dan Gillmor of ASU Digital Entrepreneurship Program.

Pat Sullivan

Next was “Lessons Learned” by Pat Sullivan Sr. of Flypaper, but more notably the founder of ACT!. Pat had some great points, including:

• Read Everything – Never stop learning. Pat reads Techcrunch as often as he can.

• What distinquishes you from everyone else?

• Focus & Positioning

• No magic bullet

• Be fanatical about details

Matt Mullenweg

Next is Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress. Matt is great. A very funny guy for being so laid back. The main quote I remember from Matt is “Be a pain killer, not a vitamin.” He highlighted that vitamins cost less than a third of what pain killers cost. Lesson is there is much more money in fixing problems rather than preventing problems.

Chris Brogan and Jody Gnant

Next up was Chris Brogan and Jody Gnant. Theirs was an interesting presentation. They basically talked about why you should be on Twitter. Which, with this being an entrepreneurship conference, I’m curious how everyone thought about it that are not New Media entrepreneurs. I kind of cringed a bit, not because of Chris and Jody, but thinking that this turned into more of a Social Media conference with an entrepreneurial slant. So my cringing was me thinking about how things were going from the perspective of those non New Media savvy folks. They needed to hear it, but did they appreciate it? I hope so.

Chris Pirillo

Then we had Chris Pirillo remotely from Seattle being Chris Pirillo, which is a bit spastic. Not saying that is a bad thing, I’m just saying.  He’s a spas. :) And I’m way more informed about coffee cups that change color with the temperature. I’m now writing this paragraph 5 days after the conference, and I honestly can’t remember what Chris talked about. But I don’t think that’s any fault of his, I think the video is just harder to concentrate, and I may have been writing the first 5 paragraphs of the post at that time too. :) oops

Gary Vaynerchuk

What can you say about Gary? He’s the only speaker that got a standing ovation… that says something.  Gary is full of energy, he is encouraging, he makes you want to make things happen, and he knows his stuff.  On top of that Gary is a heck of a guy.   I’ve met him several times now, and from day one when I first met him at SXSW last year, he treated me and everyone else with respect and interest.  Unlike many of the other New Media “stars” who are clearly way better than me and wish me to know that.   Gary is different, thanks for that Gary.

Dan Willis

Finally, we have Dan Willis who had the very unenviable task of telling us about a new program from Microsoft, and he had just listened to about 12 hours of occasional Microsoft bashing. Not so much bashing, just negative comments, with no positive ones. He fielded it well though, and even got me to listen to what he had to say. He was announcing the start of Microsoft BizSpark. It looks interesting for Microsoft users, but I didn’t hear anything about a laptop with Windows to get me to sign up, so I guess I’ll keep plugging away on my Ubuntu Linux.

Francine Hardaway

Francine organizes the conference every year with the help of Brian Shaler and others, so a list of names would not be complete without hers.  Thanks for the efforts to get great people to speak.  The conference was a hit and well worth the money for a one day conference.  I’m already looking forward to next year.