Whenever I walk somewhere, and someone hands me a flyer, it’s like they’re telling me, “Here, you go throw this away.”
-Mitch Hedberg

Image by wilyumzzz via Flickr

If you’ve ever walked down a street in midtown Manhattan, you’ve most likely been in the uncomfortable position of being handed a flyer for a restaurant, club, event, whathaveyou.  It never struck me before, but this is a great example of Value Exchange Dissonance.

Value Exchange Dissonance is something I just made up.  It describes a situation in which one party takes an action that they believe provides enough value to prompt an action by another party, when the other party feels it is an imposition on them (negative value).

When a person hired by a restaurant hands you a flyer, here’s what their perception of the exchange is:

“Greetings, random person in the neighborhood! Here is a free menu with information on all the wonderful things you can eat at my establishment.  Now, come and have a meal at my restaurant. It’s the least you can do, after I provided you with this information!”

Taking our knee-jerk social marketer hats off for a moment, let’s now look at the experience from the point of view of the person receiving the flyer.

“Here I am just going about my day, on my way somewhere, and some random person thrusts a piece of paper at me, disrupting my personal space, my rhythm, distracting me from whatever I’ve been thinking about and pushing their message at me without regard for my interest or where my attention was.  If I was hungry, I’d go to a restaurant that didn’t need to disrupt my day.  I don’t even like Indian food!  Screw this place.”

Value Exchange Dissonance.  To the extreme.  And the end result is the opposite of what was intended.

There is a crucial point there.  A marketing engagement is valuable or not valuable based on the POV of the ‘receiver’ of the engagement.

In this case, if 0 is the baseline, handing someone a flyer may have a +3 perceived value for the restaurant, but if its a -6 to the recipient, it still nets out at -3.

This is why User Experience is so important.  There are lots of examples of otherwise well-meaning people and organizations who may genuinely not be paying attention to how the experience plays out for the other side.

Are you paying attention to how you may create or destroy value in an experience? Or are you another victim of Value Exchange Dissonance?

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All this talk about Twitter and Facebook engagement, how you need to be authentic and transparent, let people behind the scenes, tell stories.  This is all well and good, and enough (some might say too much) has been written about the what and the how.

We should talk more about the why.  Not the why in the “so we can help you meet your business goals” sense (I would file that squarely in the ‘results of efforts’ column, on the other side of the equals sign).  The why in the “what are the bigger forces we are aligning ourselves with by taking your advice on communications” sense.

Here’s why (I think).  We are all working to dissolve adversarial relationships between people.

We realize that working together toward a common goal is more powerful than any positioning based on “what do I have to give you so that you do what I want”.

We notice this every day in our lives, when we reach out for help, or give a hug to a friend or a smile on the street or put a dollar in a homeless person’s hand, or tell our kids that we love them.

Many of us don’t think that this kind of interaction doesn’t scale to the world of business, where people inside the company are responsible for doing whatever is necessary to get people outside of the company to part with their money.

This is crap.  Not only is it adversarial, but it’s bad business.  People know when your intent is not pure, even subconsciously.  The more strategic you come off, the more adversarial the relationship between you and not-you becomes.

There are so many examples lately of companies and industries that find themselves in a spiral of adversity-based business decisions (see: music business).  Just today I was reading on the elevator (thanks captivate.com) that airlines are beginning to charge for seats with leg room.  My reptile brain takes this to mean that this airline doesn’t want anyone to have a good experience flying with them unless we’re willing to pay extra for it.

So why do we say ‘be authentic and transparent’?  Because when we dissolve the ‘us vs them’ mentality, we can get down to the business of creating and awesome experience for everyone who interacts with us.  If you’re in a business situation, the perception around the exchange of funds shifts from ‘I guess I can part with my money because I need or want this” to “I’m excited to be a part of what this purchase makes possible”.   If you’re in a personal situation, you get that good feeling that connecting can bring.  You make a new friend, or lover, or contact.

This is the position we’re in.  Our job isn’t really to recommend a digital strategy for people.  That’s just a trojan horse.  Our jobs, our passion as communicators (whether we’re conscious of it or not) is dissolving adversity, one communication point at a time.

It’s the most important thing we can do as people, for the health of the world.

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There’s a lot of talk in marketing and Social Media circles about ‘building brand evangelists’, and all that is well and good (and covered in-depth in infinite permutations on other and better blogs than mine.  What may not be covered as much is how best to suggest and yes even help to control the language that your newfound brand advocates use to spread the gospel of your fantastic product or service.

What it boils down to is this:

I tell people about you how I want, not how you want.  Therefore, your monitoring will always be incomplete.

A great example of this happened to me awhile back, when a friend @megfowler posted a twitter update complaining that she goes through lots and lots of earbuds.  I’ve been a fan of my Etymotic ER6s for year now (both their product and their customer service have impressed me in the 5-6 years I have been using them.

My response (and recommendation) on twitter, however, looked like this:

“@megfowler might be time to invest in some high quality earbuds. i love mine http://bit.ly/ZX8cc“

You’ll notice, quite unintentionally, that my post did not mention Etymotic, the ER6, or etymotic.com.  Now, the bit.ly link happens in this case to go to etymotic’s site, but it could’ve just as easily gone to Amazon or J&R or a random blog post on the topic.

If you’re not using an in-depth monitoring tool (and sometimes even when you are), you WILL miss conversations happening.  This is something that is important for people to remember, in this age of  ‘it’s all happening online, conversations are measurable’, that you’re going to miss some.

How are you going to become the kind of brand that makes people want to go out of their way to point you to things you might have missed?

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When thinking about how best to “convert” the business-minded folks over to recognizing the value of making themselves present via social channels, I often think in terms of “how can I make them see that what they’re doing isn’t all of what they could be or should be doing”, and its a frustration to me that a lot of really smart, well-thought-out posts on assorted blogs will really only be read, digested and used by people who “already get it” on some level.

In order to “reach” the rest of them, I often think a post entitled “how social media will make you money” would be hugely popular. I don’t think many of us (myself included) are as strong at “leading a horse to water” as we need to be.

Perhaps its our own stubbornness and unwillingness to maybe be influenced by those more sales-focused minds and opinions that get in our way?

Every interaction between two people leaves both a little changed, but when we talk about bringing people to our side of the fence, we rarely consider how close we need to get to the fence ourselves in order to have that conversation.

Maybe we do ourselves a disservice in this way?

What are we willing to take on and learn from “the other side” in order to bring balance?

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We still make assumptions, though.  There are still some old habits we continue to believe to be true.  One of the biggest things I’ve been noticing people falling back on when interacting, especially on behalf of a larger organization is speaking from a position of authority.

Authority is one of those nebulous positions that seems to have more to do with our own self-image than about any particular knowledge.

For me, the most appropriate definition for Authority in this context is the typically inaccurate assumption that a given person or organization’s content has inherent merit based on its source, rather than on its actual value to the community.

We all still fall into this trap sometimes. Our blogs are full of posts about the great things we (and the companies we work for) do, we create sweepstakes (read: bribes) built around using a particular product, we try to tell people what to think and what to do.  At this point however, it’s not a safe bet to make any assumptions about the authority your voice carries within community.  A few of the reasons what we say often doesn’t have the sway we think it does are:

• We have not built a trusted relationship within our community. You work for the company that makes the product? That’s great. So what? What have you done that would demonstrate to me that I should take what you say about your product seriously? As my friend Jason Falls says over at SocialMediaExplorer, “The trust you build is largely dependent upon the ability to convince them your intent is pure.” If you are the representative of a company, by definition your intent is to sell me on something, which tweaks the bullshit detectors in many of us.
• We as consumers trust users more than creators. Say you’re a member of a cooking community.  Which person would influence your engagement more: The Communications Director for All-Clad, or Bobby Flay?  The truth is, unless you’re in a tiny micro-niche industry, there are other more publicly visible experts on your product than you.  This already puts you in second place for ‘entity with authority’.
• Assuming authority without earning the role of trusted advisor from the ground up makes us come off as obnoxious. Instead, (and here’s where the social media nerd comes out) start by listening, and then become a person-sized learning atom within the community.

All of this is hard for us to process.  The loop of “We made it, of course we know best, don’t be silly.” is hard to break.  For me, I’ve noticed that underneath stuff like that is fear.  There is a fear and insecurity that “if we don’t talk about ourselves, nobody else will have a reason to either”

I’m here to say that I don’t think this is true anymore, and that not always having to be authoritative takes a lot of the tension and strain out of our day. It frees us to lean forward, engage, learn, connect.

Interestingly, that may also be how we build up true credibility in the conversation, as decided by others around us.

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It’s really important to me to support my community and spread the love around whenever I can (I’m not always perfect at it, especially when I’m stressed, but it’s always a good feeling).  This is part of what we all mean when we say ‘be human’.  What we’re talking about is “Give.”  Give respect, give attention, give time, give congratulations, show gratitude. This is what creates a community as opposed to a random collection of twitter followers or a Facebook page that people join and never ever go to again.

When I was younger, I went to a summer camp called the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, which was out on Long Island (an hour-and-a-half commute).  On the bus ride there, I became fast friends with a group of 6 people around my age.  We would each have our own regular seats, have lunch together, and generally were a fun little clique who would support each other.

Earlier this year, one of those six people performed with Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Day to open the Grammies. She’s also been on the Tony’s, and co-starring in the Broadway hit American Idiot. I could not be more proud of my friend Rebecca Naomi Jones, and I was able to spread the love to my network of folks who might not be aware of the show or her.

You can follow her at @rebeccasername.

Who can you give love to today?

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Theres an increasing backlash against Social Media as shiny object lately, and rightfully so. The concept of communicating online to meet business goals, when wrapped around this aura of Next Big Thing can easily mutate into the “Get me a Facebook account!” nightmare that haunts our dreams.

Every time we recommend a channel plan in place of re-learning basic communication skills and applying them to the betterment of the audience, we do everyone a disservice. It turns out that companies (and people) that are bad communicators are bad communicators, regardless of whether they’re communicating on Twitter, in person, via an ad campaign.

As those who are ‘in the know’ and focused on improving communications as much as we know how, should we be focused less on providing a friction-free way for the people within organizations to map their bad habits onto new channels (surely not a recipe for success)?

Or are we going about it backward? Should we instead be focused more on swaying peoples hearts and minds toward investigation and communiciation styles that we know to be more effective, even if it is technically ‘outside the scope’ of what we are officially responsible for?

How far up and back does our responsibility to influence the process and the mindset go?

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Image via Wikipedia

First off, this may be a little different in tone than my usual posts.  It is repurposed from a music industry mailing list I’m on (I spent a decade in the music biz.. for more on that, find out about me).

Some context:  The rant came about in a thread discussing the “revelation” from the NY Times that the DOJ is looking into how Apple treats the record labels when it comes to exclusives, implying that there may be some unfair business practices, especially in regard to their continued veiled threats about pulling their promotional support if labels give exclusives to competitor Amazon’s MP3 store.  While I was never on the receiving end of these kinds of conversations, I can say for a fact that it definitely is in keeping with the tone of conversations that happen between the iTunes store staff and major labels.

Apple has a 90% market share of all digital music sold, and 25% of all music sold is sold through the iTunes store.  This is a staggering number for a single entity, and they have made no bones about using their sway to get their way.  Long ago, the major labels decided that instead of spreading exclusives around to seed a balanced marketplace, they were going to bet everything on iTunes each time, since ‘that’s where people are buying music’.  This forest-for-the-trees strategy led them to where they are today, with a full quarter of their potential earnings from their main source of income being controlled by a group of not that many Apple employees, a company that treats music as a loss leader to sell iPhones.

Anyway, someone on that list posted a response to the article basically calling people to task for the common refrain of “its hard to compete with free”, and wondering why the industry seems to have accepted this as the context for the conversation, ending with this line:

“When is the industry going to GET OFF THE GODDAMN MAT and stop complaining and start telling people what to buy again and how to buy it?”

To be fair, the tone of his post was pretty ranty, and I do not mean to pick on him specifically, but here’s my response.

This is the worst advice. The industry as a whole (especially the majors) has zero space at the table of “What music should i buy” right now. It’s questionable whether they ever did, really (beyond the “hey, we control all the ways you could possibly consume music, so for all you know, what Z100 plays is the only music that exists”)

There are SO MANY ways for people to discover new music right now. INFINITE ways. DJ mixes, last.fm, pandora, having a friend give you a hard drive worth of music in college, free showcases, tv commercials, Abercrombie and freakin Fitch…i could go on (so could all of you)

What happened this last decade (post-napster) is that majors (and many indies, don’t fool yourself) happily traded Credibility and Authority for short-term Staying Afloat. THEY SUED THEIR FREAKIN CUSTOMERS. Imagine any other industry doing that? Imagine Toyota suing Hertz? Imagine Heinz suing you if you took an extra squirt of ketchup at mcdonalds?

The amount of short-sightedness, tone-deafness and general disdain for their customer base was and is IMHO unprecedented. But what else to expect from an industry formed around egocentric reality-challenged cokehead creatives gorging on high   that consumers were forced to pay due to lack of any other distribution. Of course, now its run by conservative, boring, unininterested-in-the-art-of-music lawyers whose only job is to squeeze as much revenue from the existing models as possible so the SVP of Rock Promotion Northeast region can keep their
freaking job.

This isn’t a collapse of the industry. This is the deflation of a ridiculously overvalued commercial enterprise to a new equilibrium based on music fandom, not plastic disc consumption. This is what the industry SHOULD have been making in revenue all along if they weren’t allowed to charge $25 for a Britney CD.

More people listen to more music in more ways than in any time in history. The response could be “well, how can we make that a great experience, and provide additional value to the experience that only we know how to do, in order to encourage people to spend money on our products”. It could be “The internet has made music the lifeblood of more people throughout the world than ever before. What can we do to keep that flowing, to enrich peoples lives with the backstory and the history and our depth of expertise and archives and resources”

Instead its “When is the industry going to GET OFF THE GODDAMN MAT and stop complaining and start telling people what to buy again and how to buy it?”

Really?

As a music fan who has spent tens of thousands of dollars on vinyl, cassettes, CDs, tickets with a 50% service charge, $25 t-shirts, and who also has a considerable collection of music i did not pay for? As someone who LOVES music with my heart and soul and would LOVE to have an industry dedicated to helping me find my new favorite album, to giving
me the stories behind the music and the people involved, to sharing in the excitement I have when I first hear a song that will end up rating high in my pantheon of life moments? As someone who worked in the industry for a decade, trying to fight boneheaded decision after boneheaded decsion and getting only blank stares and scorn in response?

Fuck off and die already.

I’d be interested in hearing what those of you who don’t have any experience in the music biz have to say.  Does this jibe with your understanding of how it has worked?  What say you, as a customer?

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Is what you’re doing making life more awesome for those around you.

This comes from your gut.  It’s not something that can be measured in Excel. Forget about Excel for now.  Can someone take this tweet, this campaign, this conversation, this date, this blog post, this smile, and grow from it?  Not every interaction need be earth shattering, but every one should come from the intention of generosity and empowerment.

You can tell when someone isn’t coming from this place.  It’s not their fault, they may not know any better.  You see them create videos that talk about how awesome the new version of their product or service is, have conversations with the “enough about me, what do you think about my situation” attitude, and so on.  Too much of this, and it can actually be viscerally distasteful to interact.

Of course, trying to do this every single time is very difficult.  But I think if more people, more companies, more interactions were built on this premise, even just 1% more, the world would be a much richer place.

To illustrate, here’s a picture of a cat bathing its kitten. Happy Friday!

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Most organizations really want a big following, not a community.

A following is an audience that interacts with you. A community is an audience that interacts with each other.

One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about in my capacity as a digital strategist is the choices companies make with regard to how they position themselves within the communities they enable.  I think as an industry we may be doing a disservice to the overall success of these communities by not stressing the following point:

Even though you are the creators of the ecosystem, that does not mean you are the most essential part of the discussion.

In fact, taking a stance “above” or “apart” from the rest of the community will only detract from people’s willingness to engage. Nobody likes to feel like ‘big brother’ is there, or that they’re being talked down to.  This is another example of ‘us vs them’ thinking.

Whether people choose to start conversations or not is a function of how you position yourself within the community.  If you are the ‘voice of God’ and ‘the one with all the cool stuff, tips and tricks, and information,’ of course people aren’t going to chat. You’ve made it clear with your tone that you don’t need their help, you can handle it all yourself.  People respond to that by going elsewhere.

Instead, consider become a person-sized atom of your community.  Answer questions, yes.  But also respond to unrelated comments, ask people for advice, take your cues from what people are talking about.

Pretend you’re not the administrator, just be a fellow user who happens to have access to some of your companies resources.  The only special power bestowed upon you as an administrator is control over the technical parameters of the community.  Your voice in the conversation is exactly the same as anyone else.

You will be much more valued as a humble human presence that is there to learn and grow and be inspired by those who choose to spend their time with you than anything you could say as ‘the authoritative voice of your product with all the answers’.

Or you could continue to build a “following” of people who don’t really care all that much.

Up to you.

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For those who are connected with me online (or offline), I do try my best to help those around me as much as possible.  Whether it’s offering words of encouragement, sharing a link, or connecting people who might benefit from a relationship with each other (when Katie Morse posted a question on Twitter asking for people to summarize themselves in a single word, I chose ‘connector’).

I believe that underneath every effective business plan and underneath every interaction must be an intent to connect and give.  This is the killer app. Those looking for maximum ROI with minimum risk are missing the point entirely, both in business and in life.  Giving as little as possible while expecting support in return is a recipe for a lonely existence.

Often, we lose sight of why we’re actually here. We get buried underneath our day-to-day strategizing, planning, brainstorming, trying to stave off unexpected results.  We become afraid of surprises, so we try to plan for every contingency. We try to tie every interaction on a 1:1 basis back to a business goal (or, “what’s in it for me?”).  Slowly, the promise dies in a hailstorm of planning, structure and alienating language, and we end up with a social network presence nobody cares to visit, and we eat dinner alone in the dark.

It’s so important to take the time to flip it around, to think about feeding your communities, to connect and give whenever you can.  It’s important for your own mental health, the well-being of your company, the popularity of your twitter account, the survival of the species on this planet.

I know your CMO doesn’t care about connecting with customers on a one-to-one basis as much as shouting from the rooftops how great the latest version of gadget xyz is.

I know your product manager wants to do a retweet contest or ‘crowdsource the new tv ad!’. That’s not giving. That’s not making something possible that wasn’t possible before.

I know some people may read this and say ‘well yes, but you need to convert this into business speak and reframe it around making money or saving money in order for it to resonate’.

I call bullcrap.

Giving is transformative. Whether its a philanthropic donation, a link to something someone was looking for, a hug and a smile, or an amplified voice, this is the stuff that changes minds, changes lives, changes policies. And yes, this is also the stuff that makes me spend time on your fan page, buy your stuff, tell my friends.

So, for the sake of you, and for the sake of the world, think about what you can give and what you can make possible for just a moment. Get out from underneath all the bullshit and just connect on human level.  Just once.  And then just once again. And just once, again.

Please.

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Sometimes, though, I wonder: why are we, as digitally focused communicators all so obsessed with strategy? Why are we all so impressed with ourselves when we come up with a cool strategy for a campaign, for a candidate, for a cause.  Why do we have conferences, organizations, entire channels dedicated to strategic thought?

All I can come up with at this very moment is the following: Strategy is easy. Execution is not.

Talk is cheap, actions are not.

I had two very different experiences at conferences these last two weeks.  I was fortunate enough to be invited to go to the Clinton Foundation’s “Clinton Global Initiative University” conference in Miami.  CGIU is an organization where college-age folks can make ‘commitments’ to amke a difference in the world in one of several different areas, and are empowered by the Clinton name, and get together once a year to network, build resources,  and present.  A coworker and I went around with a Flip Camera and interviewed students about what they’re doing.   The answers were truly inspiring.

These 20-22 year olds were working to get schools built in starving nations, developing bike-share programs to cut down on greenhouse gasses, to getting legislation passed to address homeless needs.  These millennials, who we are so quick to dismiss or try to box into our own limited ideals, are out there doing something that has a tangible positive affect on the health of the world. They aren’t spending their precious resources talking about engagement strategies, which video site to use to share the story, or ‘what facebook’s open platform means for oauth’. They’re just out there, looking at things that need fixing and fixing them.

In contrast (and I will keep the abuse to a minimum here), I went to the first day of Jeff Pulver‘s #140conf this past week. Now, Jeff has done a lot for the development of the web, and certainly has his heart in the right place with this conference, but the sheer amount of self-congratulatory “isn’t Twitter great, folks?” nonsense that permeated the tone of the panels and discussions was overwhelming enough that I could not bring myself to go back for day 2. Of course there were some great, inspiring conversations, but they were just that. Conversations.

The difference between these two experiences? One focused on strategy, and strategic discussions of tactics, and one was a demonstration of people doing the work.

In the end, all the ‘social media is important’ decks in the world won’t fix the problems in our society, even the ones we’re so intent on saying that communication and open dialogue will address.

So with all our hours of conversations about conversation, all our debates about where online communities are going, all our Tweets and Facebook status updates and blog posts, all our strategy and strategizing our action, what have we really done but talk.  What have you done to change the world? Who would you place your bets on making a real sustainable difference in the health of the world?

Personally, my money’s on the doers.

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This post is hard to write, and it may be hard to read. Sorry in advance.

Here goes.

I’m scared.

I’m scared that because I’m a smart guy and my particular combination of skills and interests tend to put me about a year and a half in front of the general population’s thinking on some things. I’m scared that this means that I’m always going to be “out of phase”.  This is not ego. I’m not happy about it, I’m not bragging, this isn’t a ploy or a personal branding exercise.

I’m scared that I’m always going to have to go into a room full of skeptics, at a disadvantage, and have to prove myself and why what I’m talking about is important. Some people geek out on this. I don’t. At all.

I’m scared that I’m never going to have an experience where I say something and a person who can make it happen says “Of course. Obviously.  I’m right there with you. Let’s go do something great.” I want that so much it hurts. I am capable of great things. I’ve already done some.  I want to do more.

I’m scared that this is going to continually be an isolating force in my life, that its always going to separate me from other people, that I will look back on my life and wonder where the opportunities went for me to be creative in a way that fulfills me, with a group of people who are similarly fulfilled.

I’m scared of where this came from, and I’m scared of what it means about me and what my life is, and I’m scared I’m the only one around like this.

So here I am, shouting into the void, hoping it’s not just me.

It’s not just me

Is it?

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Updated: Apparently it’s not just me.

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• The attention span of the internet is infinitesimal. Chances are, at least one of those three things mentioned will be completely forgotten about in a year. The lessons will have been learned, or not. The coverage will have been covered.
• For me, talking about an event as the main focus of a blog is backwards. It puts the focus on the event, rather than the point of view, and makes the learning that much less “portable”.

Chances are, the lessons learned from Nestle and Facebook are much broader than “don’t respond to people on Facebook with corporate lingo”, but when the entire position is framed within the Nestle example, it becomes more of a challenge for people to apply it to their own situation, be it personal or professional, and therefore becomes less valuable to someone reading it a month, 6 months, 6 years from now.

Why not structure a post to make it about responding to people’s concerns about you with compassion and being useful in your response, using Nestle as a historical example, rather than “Boy, Nestle sure screwed up this time! Just look at what they did on Facebook!”

The lessons we are learning now while these new tech implementations of humanizing concepts are in their infancy deserve to be recorded.  The thinkers and people who are passionate about it should all have a voice.  But let’s document the times in a way that will resonate into the future, and not be left as a one-off relic of the times.

This is what makes content evergreen, rather than ‘news’.

What say you? Am I nitpicking?

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Hello-

It’s time for an intervention. We ‘ve been worried about you. You’ve been spending an awful lot of time at marketing conferences, talking about marketing with other marketing people on Twitter and Facebook, reading newsletters from Chris Brogan, CC Chapman and the WOMMA team. Maybe you’ve even taken it upon yourself to write a blog post or two about the importance of “Joining the Conversation”.

You proudly proclaim that you “get it”. Out with the old, in with the new. Community, collaboration, crowdsourcing. Empowering the consumer. Push vs pull.

Let me share with you how your experiences have affected us.

• We don’t feel connected with you anymore. You proclaim you know what’s good for the amorphous mass known as consumers, wholly excluding yourself and what you know to be true about how you want to interact with companies, instead choosing to focus on statistics, anecdotal stories shared by others with similar worldviews, and what Google Analytics’ home page tells you.
• For someone so focused on the power of others, you sure do spend an awful lot of time talking about what you’re up to.  Your Facebook pages (and those of your clients) have the unmistakable tone of “Look at what we can do for you! Aren’t we great?” We think you may be missing the point a little.  When you say “It’s not about us anymore,” and then twitter about your new launch party, people may come to the conclusion that you and your clients may be a bit insecure and overcompensating by talking about yourself. You know, the whole “Enough about me, what do you think about me?” thing.
• Relax! We like you! That’s why we followed you on Twitter, fanned you on Facebook, checked out your blog, maybe even subscribed to your newsletter.  You don’t have to tell us how cool you and your company are all the time.  Just be cool, and show some interest in what’s going on with us.  You know, like an actual conversation, rather than something one of you came up with to sell books.

• When your company’s communications are about how many units you’ve sold or how popular you are? Yeah, we don’t care.  We also don’t care about awards you’ve won, chart positions within your industry, or how innovative you are, or how much you’re pushing the envelope.  It’s great for you that your company is meeting its financial goals, but for us, it comes off more like “look at how much money you guys are giving us!”
• We think you might be forgetting that we are the reason your company has those sales numbers, and the reason we are the reason is that you’ve done something to make our lives easier, more fulfilling, more fun.  The monetary transaction is a result of us weighing the pro’s of giving you our money vs the con’s of not getting access to your product or service. That is what drives us to invest time and money in your company, not your company’s sales, awards, or the pretty new website that your web team worked so hard on.
• This is kind of awkward, but… You know when you talk, blog or tweet about meeting your business goals publicly? We’re a little embarrassed for you.  See, the thing is, we don’t care about your business goals, unless we do.  We know this is complicated to understand, but think of it this way: If you get some great news from a friend, you congratulate them.  If some guy from your high school that ignored you the entire time you were there is in the paper talking about how he’s now a millionaire and marrying the prom queen? Yeah…not so much.  We care about your success when its our success too.  You making money is not our success, it’s a reminder of our money that your company is now spending to send out a press release about all the money its making.
• We’ve noticed you’ve taken to calling us  advocates, audiences, influencers, milennials, and talking about our psychographics and our clickstreams.  Can you see how this could make us feel like less than people, and how we might think we’re not that important to you?  We know, on some level, that you need to aggregate how we interact with you in order to best serve us in the future (that is what you’re doing, right?), but we don’t need to know how the sausages are made.

So, we hope that you will take these in the spirit in which they were intended.  We really do care about you, and we want whats best for you. We recognize that maybe you don’t see how what you’ve been doing has affected you and the people around you, so we wanted to gather together and let you know, for your own good.

With love

-People on the internet

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