Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Loyal listeners of The Hopkinson Report know a few things about me:

- I never miss a week (once in the last 118 episodes)
- I love technology, being online and all things social media
- I love mountain biking (I compared the ‘flow’ of biking to a business in Episode 113)

So when I was away for the first part of my vacation while mountain biking some epic trails in Seattle, the capable Brandon Werner filled in. But then the unexpected struck when I came back to the east coast to go biking in the rocky trails of the Pocono mountains.

Photo: Happier, 2-armed times near Seattle just days before my crash

Do you believe in social media karma? No less than SEVENTY-FOUR different people wished me happy birthday on Thursday August 19th. It was great. Everyone was so happy, and people wished me the greatest day of the year!

Well, as fate would have it, my upper arm (distal humerus) would face a 3-foot high karma boulder head-on. And lose. Badly.

The next week turned into a whirlwind of hospitals, travel, surgery, second opinions, friends, family, pain, insurance red tape, and frustration before finally making it back to NYC.

My friends said that I would somehow find a way to link my broken arm to social media.

In truth? I went the opposite way.

What did NOT matter in that week, was twitter, foursquare, facebook, marketing, viral videos, podcasts, and blog posts.

What DID matter, was family, friends, coworkers, communication and old school doctors screwing a piece of metal into me to put me back together.

I will say this:
- Text updates were great for quick communication
- Facebook is a great way to post gross photos
- E-mail is a good way to tell a story once to many people (helpful with one arm)
- The iPad is a great way to kill 3 painful hours on a train

However, all this is nothing without a real world network.

So I ask you… How is YOUR real life network?

Is it healthy?

Or is it fractured?

More »

On this special edition of The Hopkinson Report, Jim is on vacation, so I, Brandon Werner (Intern 1.0 for long time The Hopkinson Report listeners) guest-hosts. I explain why Social Media is the new dividing factor between Generation Y and their Baby Boomer parents.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

On Hopkinson Report Episode 102, Jim interviewed me on my research on my generation, the millennial AKA Generation Y. This group is also called the echo-boom, as they are the children of the famous Baby Boomers. Since recording that episode, I had a revelation that will be the topic of this episode.

When I was a child, I remember my parents (baby boomers/teens of the 60′s and 70′s) used to tell me stories of how their parents “just didn’t get it”. Their formative teenage years were filled with Woodstock, the anti-Vietnam movement, Nixon… These were the years of Rock ‘N Roll and there was a sharp divide between the baby boomers and their “Greatest Generation” parents.

Through my teenage years, I never really felt that level of misunderstanding between my parents and I. In fact, my parents “got-it” almost too well.  I wanted to learn drums and be in a band, my dad taught me how to do it from his own experiences, If I tried to dye my hair, my mom would show me how. The classic parent/son anti-piercing or tattoo fight? They actually encouraged them (so I didn’t really have any drive to get them). I would say I wanted to go to a Green Day concert, and my dad would ask to come with me.

From talking to my friends, this is pretty standard. Where was our rebellion or revolution?  Where was our Rock ‘N Roll? Recently, after a few failed attempts to communicate exactly what I do for a living, I think I found it. Our Rock ‘N Roll is Social Media.

As I mentioned, the big events of my parents’ formative years are immortalized as the hippie and rock movements, I look back on the last ten years and one movement sticks out plain to see, Web 2.0 and the rise of the social networks. While it is hard to imagine, Facebook has only been around for five years. In that time, it has amassed over 500 million users, half of which log in on any given day. More than half of everyone in their 20′s has a Facebook profile.

I am not exaggerating when I say it is hard to imagine life without Facebook, but it is just one site. Think about how much YouTube, for example has changed the way we watch entertainment. I believe we just witnessed a milestone in how advertising is done with the recent Old Spice man response videos. Who wasn’t talking about those? In a time where not so long ago, people were saying TIVO was going to destroy advertising, we are passing around commercials and watching them for enjoyment! These videos received 45 millions views in just 2.5 weeks, with Old Spice sales going up 107% since the campaign started. When I asked my dad what he thought, he replied “Old Spice? That was for old people…” Talk about brand transformation.

The eternal disagreement with my parents is, “why don’t you get off that computer”. They would rather me do anything other than sit at the computer, including sit and watch television. For the baby boomers, the first computer they ever learned to use was at work or maybe Atari. It is a single use tool, or even a toy. For us Millennials, we can not even remember a time before computers.  For me, sitting and just watching television is absurdly boring when I can be doing other things as well.

For me, my computer/iPad/iPhone are my television, office, bank, notebook, phone, book, canvas, post-office, etc. Try to think when was the last time you had a phone conversation for over a hour on a landline… When was the last time you stepped foot in the Post-Office? Been to a Blockbuster lately? Stood on an actual line to get tickets to a concert? How about had film developed?

Even our dating has moved online, with online matchmaking sites being one of the internet’s biggest businesses. Eharmony throws around the statistic that it is responsible for 2% of US marriages and a recent study says that up to 1 in 3 relationships today start online. Even crazier, 1 in 8 couples married in 2009 met via Social Media.

I think one of the biggest differences between generations is old friends. My parents have a tight circle of friends, but anyone they knew from high school or college that moved away from the area, they have little, if any contact with. This just sounds so alien to me. My best friends are scattered all over the country right now, but through twitter, Facebook, and texts… I have constant contact with them. Sure, its not physical, but its comforting to talk to people I have known since childhood.

I know that my parents think on some level what I do on the computer is almost akin to playing a video game. They can’t even fathom that I am actually talking to real people on Gchat, having interesting conversations on twitter, producing content that helps get my name out there, or god-forbid making money on the internet through freelance.

We are living in an absurdly exciting time. In my opinion, this could be looked back as one of the most important decades in history. We are (almost) all carrying pocket-sized computers which hold access to all of humanity’s knowledge. It’s a shame Douglas Adams died before he could see humanity with basically The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in our pockets. We are able to instantly connect us with anyone we want, even in video form. We get updated the second any important thing happens to our friends and family, and get the world news at basically the speed of light without the limitations of paper. Think about this: 150 years ago, it took the Pony Express ten days to get a letter from Missouri to San Francisco. Today, we can get a letter from Missouri to China in seconds.

From my parents, I have seen the wonder, but usually aversion to the progress that not only the internet, but the socially networked internet is bringing to the world. They are amazingly supportive of what I do with my life, but every so often things break down and they show just how much they don’t understand. Yes, I know that the largest growing group right now on Facebook is the 55+ year-olds, but for the most part, they aren’t using social media in every facet of their lives to the level the Generation-Y, Millennials are. I know there are many exceptions to what I am saying and I am sure any one listening to this podcast that is a Baby Boomer is one of those exceptions.

But I think I can safely say that Social Media is an invention forged by Millennials and younger Generation Xers.
Mark Zuckerburg founder of Facebook – 26.
Kevin Rose founder of Digg – 33.
Jack Dorsey co-founder of Twitter – 33.
David Karp founder of Tumblr – 24.

For a little comparison… When the Beatles came to America in 1964, largely regarded as one of the keystone moments in rock history, John Lennon was 24! 24! I’m 25 and I don’t think I’ve written anything as profound as Can’t Buy Me Love.

Then why this drive to spill our life and feelings out digitally in little bite-sized pieces? Well, let’s look at music’s equivalent of bite-sized spilling of life and feelings, Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll flourished in the 60’s and 70’s. For teenagers and Young Adults, it was a pretty disillusioning time. America was caught in seemingly unending war, there was a serious split between left and right political views, and the economy was in the toilet. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Like Rock, Social Media allows us to vent and feel connected to a greater whole. Like many people my age, I graduated into one of the worst economies in history with a masters and nothing to do with it. I have applied to over 150 jobs, attend meet-up groups monthly, but still have not found full-time employment. Instead of wallowing in self pity, I decided to put all my time that was not spent working on freelance or searching for full-time into jumping headfirst into Social Media, developing my own blogging collective of people in similar situations. I know I am far from the only one in my age group doing this thanks to the connections I’ve made online.

Neil Young said “Hey hey, my my, Rock and Roll will never die” and I think the same applies to Social Media. Sure it will become more and more mainstream, and one day will evolve into a part of everyone’s life. I am sure my age-group’s children will be all over it, in fact my feeds are filling with baby pictures at the moment. What I find even scarier than this is that this poor children could one day sign up for Facebook with 1,000 pictures of them already. You know those embarrassing pictures your mother shows to your friends when they visit? Oh boy…

Just as social media confuses my parents, I am sure these facebook feed babies will find something that confuses my generation.

I hate saying this. I really do. It makes me sound like a whiny brat. It makes me sound like a hippie/rocker/punk talking about their parents in the 60’s and 70’s. The millennial generation helped change the course of an election using Social Media electing the first black president, saved Conan O’Brien’s career with Team Coco, almost destroyed and then revitalized the music industry with MP3 downloading, and are completely changing the publication and advertising industries. To our generation this is exciting, this is ours, this is Rock ‘N Roll!

If you disagree with anything I said in this episode, please leave a comment below and to you I say relax, its only Social Media, but I like it, like it, yes I do.

For more of my nerdy content, check out TheModernDayPirates.com and follow me on twitter @BBwerner!

More »

A new movie about Facebook is coming out this fall called The Social Network. I give you 7 reasons why I think it will be a huge success.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Today in the podcast I talk about the 7 reasons people with “LIKE” the Facebook movie. Get it? Like??? Luckily, the rest of the podcast is not that cheesy. Here is the outline of topics I cover:

1) A built-in audience of 500 million fans
With just the sheer number of people ON Facebook, how can this thing NOT make money? It was announced July 21 that Facebook had officially passed Five Hundred Million worldwide users.

- Let’s see… how could they market this… um, how about with Facebook ads?
- College kids are going to see this… they came of age during the Facebook era and lived it.
- Social media geeks are going to see this… it’s like Sex and the City for nerds
- Other non-geeks that don’t know the full story will see it
- Millions will see it just out of curiosity

2) Social media/word of mouth/bloggers
What’s the best way to get lots of people to see your movie?
Word of mouth marketing.
And no site on the web is better equipped to spread the word than Facebook.

We are consumed with it.
- 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook
- The average user has 130 friends

If even a small fraction of the first people to see it shares it with their 130 friends, the word of mouth viral marketing will be like the Old Spice guy on crack.

BUT

Word of mouth only works if it’s a GOOD movie. Bad word of mouth spreads too. So, do we have any indicators to see if it will actually be a GOOD movie? Well, we can start by looking at the pedigrees of the creators:

3) Aaron Sorkin, writer
- He did the West Wing, a show that I’ve heard was amazing, but I never really watched. But 7 years on the air and dozens of awards can’t be bad.
- He also did A Few Good Men, a film that grossed $141,000,000 in the US alone. Did the film do well because Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Jack Nicholson were in it? Or did those stars take the role because it was a strong script?
- He also did Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. This was a show that not a lot of people saw (it was canceled after one season due to ratings), but I actually watched every episode and loved it. The dialog was excellent.

4) David Fincher, director
- He did the movie Se7en, not a bad flick
- He also did Fight Club, which the “reddit.com movie critic” subreddit section thinks is one of the best all time
- He was a Best Director nominee for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. While I thought this movie was very good (but not great… and WAY too freaking long), it grossed $127MM domestic.

5) Ben Mezrich, author of the book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal
- Mezrich’s pedigree? He wrote book Bringing Down the House, which was made into the movie “21.” That movie made $158MM worldwide, $81 million in the US on a budget of $35MM.

6) Justin Timberlake with a permJust seeing him with that hair is comedy enough. But consider his fan base as well:
- 55 million albums sold with N’Sync
- 9 million albums sold as a solo artist
- Hugely popular guest on Saturday Night Live (I can definitely see him hosting to plug the movie)
- A crossover star in fashion… now doing commercials
- Hugely wide appeal (Notice everyone blames Janet Jackson and never him for the Super Bowl incident)

[Honorable mention for Trent Reznor, who I forgot to mention in the podcast. He is doing the musical score for the entire movie, and has a huge base both as a solo artist and from Nine Inch Nails]

7) Haters
This movie will have a ton of buzz just because it will become cool to NOT like the movie. People will want to hate it, because we’re already starting to see evidence of Facebook overload.

- It’s going to be similar to Apple. Do some people hate Apple? Yes. Do they call the supporters Fanboys? Yes. Does it stop millions of people from lining up days in advance to buying every product? No.

- Mark Zuckerberg is not entirely happy with the movie (he “expressed distaste“)

- Dustin Moskovitz, Co-Founder of Facebook had the following to say about The Social Network (I paraphrased a bit)

“It is interesting to see my past rewritten in a way that emphasizes things that didn’t matter and leaves out things that really did. Other than that, it’s just cool to see a dramatization of history. A lot of exciting things happened in 2004, but mostly we just worked a lot and stressed out about things, so I’m just going to choose to remember that we drank ourselves silly and had a lot of sex with coeds.”

- The anti-movie spoofs have begun:

So to sum up, not everyone is going to be “a fan” of the movie, but I think enough people will “like” it for it to crack $125MM with ease.

More »

Jim’s guest is Deanna Zandt, author of a social media book. They talk about how she got a book deal, raised money to fund it, and how she got free pizza.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Deanna Zandt is the author of the new book, “Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking” which you can find out more about at her website, DeannaZandt.com.

During our interview, we talk about the following topics:
- How the former corporate employee and self-proclaimed ‘webmonkey’ went from independent consultant to author
- The process she took to turn her training seminars into a book idea
- The “Jedi Mind Trick” philosophy her publisher uses, and how she used “the force” of social media to raise funds in order to work on her book
- How she used crowdsourcing on everything from the title to the cover — and how people reacted to it
- The free software program she used to dramatically ramp up her productivity during the writing process

And yes, she explains how she scored a free eye exam and free pizza along the way.

Give a listen.

Twitter: Deanna | HopkinsonReport

More »

With privacy concerns escalating and new players entering the space, is it the beginning of the end for Facebook?

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

I’m just sayin
Listen, the mighty behemoth that is Facebook is probably doing just fine. They’ve got us sucked in like lemmings, with upwards of 500 million people on the service checking email, uploading photos, finding old friends, and tending virtual farms.

But it’s been a rough month, and I’m sure young Mark Zuckerberg has aged a little as his company has been tossed about in full public view recently. I’m not saying he’s going to have a few gray hairs, after all, he did just turn 26 on May 14. But maybe he feels like a 29 year old or something.

On Wired alone, the stories have been flowing, showing the progression of events:

- Report: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Believe In Privacy
- Today Facebook, Tomorrow the World
- Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative
- Privacy Flare-Up Prompts Facebook Meetings with Congress, Employees
- Facebook to Launch “Simplistic” Privacy Choices Soon
- NYU Students Aim to Invent Facebook

Could this be the beginning of the end? Consider…

7 reasons why the mighty giant might fail

1) We’re full
I don’t know why those two words came to mind, but I liken it to the best party you’ve ever been at. Whether it be your high school prom, a great fraternity party in college, or seeing a great band. Everyone you know is there. Everyone is having a great time. But no matter how good something is, after awhile, people are going to say, you know, lets get out of here and check out something else.

As an early adopter that has been on Facebook for years, it’s been a great tool for me to connect with others, share and discuss content, and find old friends. But I feel I’m starting to get diminishing returns from my network. No longer is a former close friend finding me on Facebook, it’s distant friends of high school friends that I may not want to speak with.

Is it possible that the early adopters that are the first to jump into a new trend, are also the first ones to jump out of a new trend? Yes it is.

2) It’s a technology product
OK, I know it’s an internet site and not an old cell phone or DVD player. But if you think back at all of the websites that existed, say, during the dotcom era, it’s easy to think of the big boys that are still around — Amazon, ESPN, E*Trade, eBay — but there are many that don’t make it. Did we think that MySpace or Friendster would stand the test of time? We probably did at their height.

3) Privacy
You only have to read some of the stories above to know that privacy is a huge, huge concern. They were able to fly under the radar for awhile, with only minor grumblings from informed users as their intricate policies were continually updated. But now the government got involved, the New York Times did a report, and people are scared. They’re also confused. And for many people, when things get too complicated, they don’t try to figure it out, they just leave.

4) Arrogance
Is it easy to get cocky when you’re #1 and every analytics indicator is going through the roof? For sure. I think the symbolic move was changing the term from “fan” to “like” on branded business pages. I don’t mind it around content or activities, but show me one person that thinks “I’ve chosen to like the Wired Facebook page” is better than “I’m a fan of Wired.”

Every single interaction around that term is flawed. Day in and day out I get asked “How many fans does Wired/GQ/Ars Technica have on Facebook?” How do you easily translate that question now? How many likes does GQ have? How many people like GQ? Arrogance.

5) Revenue for Facebook
If they’re supposedly making millions of dollars in revenue now, why am I still seeing horrible banners ads that have nothing to do with me? I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make 126% return on investment like the little tiny banner told me I would. But I definitely know where to look when I’m ready to start exclusively dating single moms.

6) Revenue for brands
Yes, there are hundreds of stories of brands “engaging” with their users. And a content company like Conde Nast can drive people from Facebook to their websites, where we get paid to serve ads and sell magazine subscriptions. But I’d like to see some more examples of companies bringing in cold hard cash from Facebook.

7) We’re done
The privacy backlash is one thing, but what about a social media backlash? It’s been several years now that the early adopters have been constantly tweeting, blogging, updating, posting, uploading, and checking in. Very slowly, stories are trickling out about people getting off the carousel. Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand.com did a great post that showed that “How do I delete my Facebook account” was a growing trend.

You know how you look up from your computer at work, look at the clock and it’s 6:10, you exhale, push your chair away from the desk, and just say “I’m done.” You shut down the computer, everything goes black, and you simply walk away for the day? I have to wonder, is the time approaching that people are going to do that from social media — permanently.

More »

Today on The Hopkinson Report: Everybody Gets a Trophy!

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

I talk with former Wired Intern 1.0 Brandon Werner (pictured above) of The Modern Day Pirates about how engaging with different generations is changing, specifically that notoriously difficult market of 18-30 year olds, known to many as Millennials or Generation Y.

In this corner, Jim, the Gen X archetype. In the blue trunks, Brandon, paragon of all things that represent Gen Y.

Brandon and Jim discuss:
- How WW2 vets came home, reproduced like it was their job, and created the baby boomers.
- The relationship between Dr. Spock –not that one– and Baby Boomers becoming great, caring parents.
- Why we can blame Richard Nixon for 80s hair metal.
- Why each generation before has their own self-affirming name for Millennial.
- “The jock of today uses more computers than the nerd of the ’80s.”

Fast Facts:

Other topics covered:
- How video games are now the dominant form of media entertainment for Millennial.
- Social media is a direct result of young adults being the entitled “Me generation.”
- They’re happy to do some work at home, just let them use social media at work.

- There’s a new generation of young girls, sitting at home, talking about themselves. I couldn’t have said it any better than this video:

But wait, there’s more!
- Mobile mobile mobile! It’s the best way to advertise to Millennials and Apple, Facebook, and Google know this!
- On Demand is a necessity, they need to operate on their own schedule, especially if it gets to use through word of mouth.
- How the recession — Jim calls it “The great economic smackdown” — is keeping back the Millennials from potentially being “The Next Greatest Generation.”
- Why they’re being called “The Peter Pan Generation.”
- The infinite futility of voicemail and the incredible value of badges!

Get ready ready for your ears and eyes to bleed.
Brandon introduced me to a YouTube phenom named Fred. Thankfully, even Brandon shudders at the thought of this future. Of course, this episode talks about him missing his meds.

I couldn’t watch the whole thing to figure out which ones, but like Brandon and I talked about on the podcast, it has to be one of the anti-hyper drugs that parents are so fond of giving their kids these days.

Before you jump out of your 15th floor office window, here are the most shocking stats of all:
1) This video has 26 MILLION views (many of his others have millions as well)
2) He has A-list sponsorship via Toys R Us and Hot Topic, including a clothing line!

RANT OF THE DAY
Don’t end the podcast a moment too soon! During the final outtro music, I manage to squeeze an unbelievable basketball rant in about 14 seconds.

I finally figured it out! A revelation hit me while editing the “Generation X vs Generation Y” podcast.

I have a huge pet peeve with basketball players giving HIGH FIVES and HANDSHAKES and FIST BUMPS to teammates after MISSING a crucial free throw. This now happens at the college and NBA level.

You’ve all seen it by now. It’s the waning seconds of a game. The team is up by only a point, and the other team fouls. If the player does what they should and hit their free throws, the game is basically over. But they routinely FAIL at the one thing they’re supposed to do. Hell, Larry Bird’s FT% in 1988 was 94.7%!!!

But it’s not that they simply MISS the free throw. I’m not saying I’d make them in the same situation. But this is the problem:

The other players RUN up to them to give them a congratulatory handshake after this failure!!!

It drives me crazy! What do they even say to each other? “You just choked the free throw that will cost us the season… high five!”
I mean, seriously. Don’t you people understand the general concept!?!? When you do WELL, you get congratulated. When you FAIL, you should be feeling a bit of shame.

But now I know why: All the players are Gen Y!!!

They can’t do wrong and we don’t want any hurt feelings. It’s like a giant group hug.

“That’s ok D’BRICkashaw… don’t let those mean ol’ fans get you down. Aw shucks, you’ll get them next time. It’s not your fault.”

Well guess what … at least in college and the NBA, you don’t get a participatory trophy if you lose.

More »

How does a company turn their email file into a list of powerful social media influencers? They go to Flowtown.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Podcast Episode 101 is an interview I did at SXSW with Ethan Bloch of Flowtown.com, a service that turns email addresses into social profiles. After discussing the best way to survive the festival on no sleep and Green Tea, Jim gets down to business to find out Ethan’s story.

Topics covered:

About Ethan
- Ethan’s amazing start as an entrepreneur, importing video game components and driving $13,000 worth of revenue — at age 13!
- How marketing, finance, and technology have been the three pillars of his career thus far
- His move to San Francisco, subsequent job loss, and founding of a new business

About Flowtown
- A platform that allows businesses to connect with their customers
- Starting with their email list, Flowtown generates a list of the social networks their customer base is on, allowing them to write better posts, send better tweets, and more easily target their customers
- Not only does Flowtown return age, gender, networks, and the top 50 locations, but it then creates a sort of “iTunes Smartlist for Marketers,” showing the top 50 influencers that really move the needle

The Marketing Angle
- What is Flowtown’s approach to marketing their business?
- Where does Flowtown get their customers?
- Is all this a good thing? What about user’s personal information being exposed?
- Is email dead?

Advice for Startups
- What are the challenges of being a startup?
- What is the main advantages of being a small company?
- How the “lean startup” process enables them to make quick advances in technology
- Lessons learned through a failed project, which led to 3,500 new customers on their next project

Try it yourself
Check out flowtown.com and enter your e-mail address (it’s not stored) to find out which networks you’re on.

Follow us on Twitter: Ethan | Jim

More »

In this episode of The Hopkinson Report, Jim talks with Brendan McManus of Wildfire. The Wildfire guys have developed a streamlined, cost-efficient, and user-friendly way of integrating promotions into Facebook fan pages.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

The numbers are overwhelming…
- Facebook has 400 million users and just keeps growing
- Users are joining at least 4 fan pages every month
- Traffic from Facebook to websites is increasing

So wisely, a lot of marketers and businesses are saying
“We need to get more Facebook fans!”

But they’re not yet answering the next question… Why?

So if you’re a brand, and you have all these fans, now what do you do?

The answer is interaction, engagement, and providing some value back to the users that ‘fan’ your brand.

Companies can build brand loyalty by interacting with their fans in new and original ways, such as contests and sweepstakes. Historically, many companies have turned to online agencies to build interactive microsites. It wouldn’t be uncommon to spend 6 weeks and $50,000 to put a program together.

But a new generation of companies such as Wildfire (2 time winner of the “fbFund,” Facebook’s start-up incubator), allows you to build a simple contest for just a few hundred dollars, in only a few hours time.

In this episode of the podcast, Jim and Brendan cover the following topics:

- Why so many company “higher-ups” tend to misconstrue the potential of a Facebook fan page as merely a tool for talking to their customers

- Ways brands like Edible Arrangements (hint: it involves LOTS of chocolate) and Axe are able to effectively utilize the ‘principle of reciprocity’ through Facebook fan pages

- Why Brandon has vowed never to buy another Proctor & Gamble product again

- Listen as Jim’s marketing coordinator, Susi, slowly succumbs to the “Axe effect”

- Why video contests may not be worth the effort and the efficacy of a Facebook photo contest

- How the designers of the Wildfire App were able to successfully capitalize on emerging trends in social media networking

If you’re on Facebook – and let’s face it, who isn’t – you’ll gain valuable insight into this process.

More »

Full Transcript of Mitch Joel Interview

Recorded in New York City, September 9, 2009

Jim Hopkinson, Wired’s Marketing Guy

Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image

Click here to view the summary page of this interview, including photos and videos.

Jim Hopkinson: Alright, I’m sitting here in Wired’s New York City office with Mitch Joel. Mitch is President of Twist Image, an award winning digital marketing and communications agency. He’s also a blogger, a podcaster, a passionate entrepreneur, and speaker, who connects with people worldwide by sharing his marketing insights on digital and personal branding. Marketing Magazine dubbed him the ‘Rock Star of Digital Marketing’, and called him one of North America’s leading digital visionaries. And, in 2008, Mitch was named Canada’s most influential male on social media, one of the top 100 online marketers in the world, and was awarded the highly prestigious ‘Canada’s Top 40, Under 40.’ And as of this week, he has another title to add. So, welcome, Mitch.

Mitch Joel: Hey man, thanks.

JH: So, what would you consider your primary job, are you the owner of an agency, a speaker, a blogger, or as of this week, an author?

MJ: My friend, Chris Brogan, who’s got chrisbrogan.com and Trust Agency, says I’m a typist, is what he says [chuckles]. No, I’m actually, definitely a digital marketing agency owner. I’ve got three partners, we have offices in Toronto, Montreal, we have about 90 employees, and I really consider what I do fundamentally, marketing. I definitely use these other cool channels to build and promote the business in a very non-pitching way, but, I consider myself a marketer, at heart.

JH: So, you have the agency, and then all these other things you do kind of help you represent the agency?

MJ: Yeah, people are really shocked to hear about, but like anytime I speak, or the book advance that I got, goes right back into the agency; I don’t take my own cut out of it. When I was teaching digital courses, all that money went into the agency. I really am trying to build the business, after years of being both an entrepreneur and working for companies, I consider myself a rottweiler – this is mine, and I’m not letting go.

And, so, I just sort of look at it as I use a lot of these channels to communicate and connect to people in a very, very non-pushy or salesy way. I’m trying also to build the industry, the interactive world that we live in. And, it’s crazy! You’ve got traditional advertising will account for 90% of the budget, compared to interactive, which is like 10% – on a good day, it’s 10%. And, so, I really do see myself a little bit as an evangelist, a person who likes to go out there and speak to small and big groups about the importance of thinking differently about marketing in this day and age. Because, I’m really on a kick lately, that I think marketers are being highly irresponsible in this marketplace.

JH: What do you mean by that? [Laughter]

MJ: Jim’s eyes light up! Wow.

MJ: It’s true, right, if you think about the world as we know it; people don’t spend a lot of time and energy on search. And, that’s crazy, you have consumers. Like, you and I are going to hang out here for a couple of minutes. Whatever industry people are in that are listening to this, there are thousands of people, right now, looking for something related to that industry. And, if you’re not there, well, your competitors are, and other people are, but just think about that.

Ninety per cent of your other advertising budget is on the ‘hope and whim’ that someone sees a billboard, or catches an ad in a magazine. But, the people who are actually raising their hands and looking, so, “Yeah, search isn’t so sexy, let’s not do it.” Forget the fact that it’s a recession, but, we’re in a recession still. That’s highly irresponsible, that if you are banking dollars, almost all of them on the essence of a brand, that I believe powerfully in the power of a brand, but, I just can’t believe it. I do, I think most marketers are acting irresponsibly, I think you should be putting 100% of your budget into search, and then whatever you can’t use, then do all your other branding stuff. But, right now I’m looking, I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for customers who are raising their hands.

JH: Right. You’re going to ones saying, “I want your product, I want to find your product, and they’re going to land on your webpage.”

MJ: Or not. Or, they’re doing things like, I just came out of my talent agency in the U.S., it’s called Greater Talent, and they just do some real simple searches on search.twitter.com, like for keynote speaker. And, so, if someone is saying, “Hey, looking for keynote speaker on digital marketing”, it sort of pops up on their TweetDeck, and they’re like, “We have Mitch Joel.” They aren’t active, they’re not building audience, they’re just listening. And, it’s crazy to think that people will spend all day trying to do, like print that, whatever it is, TV ads, whatever it could be, when there are actually people in market right now saying they need something.

JH: Right.

MJ: It’s crazy.

JH: So, what led you to this point? Give us a quick background; did you always have a marketing eye?

MJ: I think I was always a marketer, when you think about it. My first sort of gig was in the mid 80s, I was a music journalist. Actually, my first gig was interviewing Tommy Lee for Motley Crue, believe it or not.

JH: Nice!

MJ: And I spent many, many years interviewing tons of great rock stars, and I was doing freelance, but, at the same time I was publishing magazines. And, if you Google my name, there are some people who say that was the first magazine ever online. I was putting this magazine on the internet so early that, I live in Montreal, I had to call long distance to Toronto to get on the internet.

JH: Huh! [Laughs]

MJ: Like that’s how, we didn’t even have an ISP at the time, so that was sort of where I was at. From there, I decided the magazine thing wasn’t for me, but, I wanted to still freelance. I started working for mama.com, which was one of the first search engines on the internet; we’re talking years before Google even existed.

I got in there very early, I was the fourth or fifth person, and we built that company up quite large, really got into paid search in the early days, again, way before Google was even around. I went through the whole ‘boom-bust’ echo that we all sort of have lived through, I think, in one incarnation or another. Spent a short bit of time helping launch a mobile company called Airborne Entertainment, some of your listeners might know this guy, Andy Nulman, who’s got a great blog called, Pow! Right Between the Eyes. He’s the founder of the Just for Laughs Festival. He’s got a book out called, Pow! Right Between the Eyes. I worked for him helping him launch this mobile content thing; again, you’re going back like eight years. So, we’re talking to carriers about data, and they were like worried about voice and turn.

JH: Mm hmm.

MJ: Like they didn’t even care, we managed to get this product on every single carrier deck, because they didn’t care about data, that’s how early that was. I spent about a year there, worked a little bit in a PR firm, wasn’t really a good fit for me, I just didn’t feel like this was where I wanted to be. I started a record company, went back into the music industry – we have two or three bands that did very, very well. And, then we got hooked up with the guys at Twist Image, and, really sort of, I think, found my thing, where I really wanted to create a next generation marketing agency. So, in one incarnation or another, I was always involved in marketing technology, communications…

JH: Yeah. And, you hear a lot about that with music. I found a lot of people in social media kind of came from music, because all of the elements are in it … it’s kind of starting small, and getting the word out, and trying to monetize, and trying to build an audience, and is there a lot of parallels you found with that?

MJ: I think there are now that I’m 38, and I look back on the fact that I started when I was 18 or 19. I see them, but, for me it was really more of, I was in an industry where I realized that’s really a small percentage of people who really make money. And, as passionate as I was about it, and, it’s not like I’m a money-grubbing guy, I’m actually quite minimalist. But, I just really want to really control my own financial outcome in life. And, I just felt like it just wasn’t a great fit for me, but, I’m still passionate about it, I’m still friends with a lot of the famous people that I sort of met when they weren’t famous, and, I do have one of those lives where anything I’ve been interested in, I pursued, and, sort of have some level of opportunity within that. So, I don’t really ever look at life and work, I’m just sort of like having fun.

JH: I’ve been the same way. I wanted to work in sports, I was able to find a job in sports [talk over each other] I wanted work in tech, I did that, so, I was checking on your blog, and I saw the archives go back to July of 2004. So, while millions of blogs are being started every month, not a lot of people have the consistency to keep it up for five years straight. I know it’s been difficult doing my podcast, I think I’m like on 72 weeks straight. How do you have the energy, and, how do you get your ideas to keep that up?

MJ: The truth is, actually, you can go back further to 2003; I saw it from a

blogger platform, and then moved slowly over onto my own platform. Being from the publishing industry is a huge key to this. And, what I learned really quickly is, let’s talk a little bit about Wired; I go and buy the new issue of Wired with Craig Newmark on the cover, and, I’m all excited. But, for the next three and half weeks I’m pretty depressed, cause I tear through it, and then I keep going back to the magazine store – nothing, you wait. But, humans intuitively sort of know when the next issue is coming out, when you’re really passionate about following a media. And, I realized at that time, when I was doing my own magazines, that as much as it’s important to be relevant, which is really, really key, consistency is a huge thing. And, I do think that as new media as we all are, and, “Hey, it’s RSS, and it’ll be there when I publish it, and that whole thing is great”, I think people do have expectations once you build up some semblance of audience. And, I do believe that one of the keys to success for any business, or any individual looking to engage, is to be consistent.

The biggest mistakes I’ve seen is like, you blog seven times a day, then, you sort of, “Well, I don’t have much to say today”, and then all of a sudden it’s twice a week, and the next thing you know, they’ve faded off and they’re not blogging ever. Or, they get excited by the next shiny object, and they hop onto Twitter. So, I’m not holding on to my blog because I refuse to let go because I’m on Twitter, I just also look at, for me, what works for me, again, background in journalism, background in publishing, blogging really, really works for me; Twitter, also, podcasting – I just did my 170^th episode. And, every single week, I don’t I’ve ever missed a week, actually. And, again for me, it’s just that consistency.

The other part of consistency is an individual looking to produce content is, I think it forces you to do stuff. And, a lot of people see it in a negative way, like, “Well, if you don’t have something to say, you’re forcing it” – yes and no. To be honest, I blog once a day, sometimes a little less, then I do twice a day later on, but I got six things I could blog about, and I’m sort of picking the one. I think just part of it, it’s just the journalist in me, like you, you’re a curious person, you ask curious questions, and, so it’s easy for me to even open up an issue of Wired Magazine, look at an article and ask myself a question, “Why is this like that?” That’s a blog post right there.

JH: Yup. So, how did the book evolve? You just launched your book this week, in the first day, it made it up to number 14 on Amazon Canada?

MJ: Yeah, Canada, we were about 350 in the U.S., which I think for a niche marketing book is pretty spectacular. Now it’s the maintenance part of it, again the consistency of keeping it there. The book was an interesting thing. I think, as a journalist, the book is like going after going Moby Dick with the spoon and fork; as a journalist, gotta get that that book, it’s the whale that you gotta to chase. And, years went by where I thought I’d like to retire and then write a book. Of course, when you say that, you put that on the world, it’s like you meet an agent, and the next thing you know. So, the next thing I know there was a sort of book opportunity in front of me through my agent, really, really exciting, called The Six Pixels of Separation. And, for me, it was actually good, I started writing as a marketer, and then I went back, and I was like, “This is the wrong angle.” The angle that I took my book was that I wrote it as an entrepreneur.

Again, in 2003, I started blogging because nobody would give me any ink. [Laughs] And, so, I thought this is the new world, I don’t need permission to be published. There are blogging platforms, and so I started off on Blogger, and, literally, we built this company – it’s 90 employees in multiple offices and great clients, because of the blog. And, I thought that in a world where people are so cynical about blogging, and Twitter, and Facebook, and YouTube, that I can, actually, also not just use other great business examples, but I think I’m the example, too. So, actually, I took a different almost language, and the language is a little bit more than my newspaper columns, and stuff like that, where it is more business person speaking to business about how to use these tools in business. [Laughs] I know it’s sort of a lot of business, but it was a big thing for me, cause I haven’t seen anything like it out there.

JH: Well, you’re pretty well known, but you’ve had a traditional publisher on this, right? And, so, we’re kind of in an age where bands are producing their own music, and actors are putting their own movies on the web, and every budding journalist has their own blog, did you consider self-publishing with some of the several sites that have that?

MJ: Yeah, I’m actually on the advisory board of a great new site called the Book Oven that’s quite involved in the sort of personal and self-publishing space. No, and the answer’s no, I never thought about it for two seconds. My whole thing was, if I was going to write a book, is I want the book to be for people who are not as engaged in these channels as we are. If you’re engaged in these channels, you’re going to read the blog or listen to the podcast, or check this podcast out; you’re not going to need to read a book necessarily.

I wanted to write a book for those people in the room that keep getting asked, “Why aren’t we doing this, why aren’t we on Facebook, why aren’t we on Twitter, why aren’t we doing this?” I wanted to write a business book for them. I jokingly tell people that the book is like the prelude to the blog, almost. But, the feedback that I’ve had so far, in all honesty, has been that even for people who are really, sort of engrained in this space, they’re also really enjoying, I think they’re enjoying reading the business side of it.

JH: That’s a great angle, I hadn’t thought of that that the reason you do a traditional book, because everyone else is already on the web.

MJ: That’s it. I wrote a book for people who read books, and it is, it’s a whole other market. We were talking before about my newspaper column, and it’s like the joke – everyone two weeks I do a business column in the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun, and people come up to me literally on the street and are like, “ I love reading you every two weeks.” I’m like, “You can read me everyday on my blog if you really wanted to.” [Laughter] But, again, these are people who are buying the newspapers, these are people who are running through the airport, stop to look in the bookstore, like, “What can I read on my trip to San Fran?” And, I keep hearing about new media, here’s a book, boom, off I go to the races.

So, for me it was really important to write a book for a certain demographic or target market, rather, what would be the Channel 3 […]? Well, if I want to get businesses excited about this channel, let me each them in a channel they like – business books, boom! So, it’s actually a sort of short bridge for me to cross.

JH: And, it sounds like it was very passionate, you had fun with it, ‘cause I’ve heard people talk about when they write a book, that it’s this long, it’s drawn out, it’s time sucking, it can be frustrating, how was your experience with this?

MJ: It’s really funny, so I speak a lot, and I know people, I go to conferences like TED, and everyone’s like, “Oh, how was it like?” I asked other people, “What was it like to write a book? Oh, it was the hardest thing, I hated it, it was like hell.” So, I was like getting really intimidated, I had the best time writing it, I loved writing it, it came really, really easy to me. Again, background is in journalism still, I’m still a journalist, as weird as that sounds when I say it. I write fast, I know I write fast, too; actually, we cut out 30,000 words to be honest [chuckles], so that’s a lot. The book is about 70,000 or 80,000 words, so we cut out a lot.

It was almost like I took a deep breath, and I was able to suddenly really talk. It was almost like we sat down, and you were a really close friend, you’d been gone for five years, and you said, “I want to start a business venture, Mitch, what should I do?” That was sort of like opening thing, and, that was like ok, voom, here’s what I would do; if I could start it all over today. So, for me it was highly pleasurable, I have an amazing agent, though, I have a great publisher. I was jokingly saying, I was telling my agent, I’d be like, “Am I doing a good job?” He says, “Like, why?” I’m like, “Cause there wasn’t really any rewrites even.” It was like the publisher was really happy, I was really happy; so a great experience, hopefully we can repeat that on book number two.

JH: That’s generally … maybe it’s that combo of a journalist and a blogger, and then an internet marketer, because that’s how I work a lot. I’ll start with something and have to write like a little blurb for a newsletter, and I’ll write it out, or even a Twitter post, and I’ll look, and, be like, “Alright, it’s 190 characters, got to get down to 130”, and then it’s easier to chip away things, and to try to like keep adding more content.

MJ: Some of the concepts were definitely blog posts previously, but they were totally rewritten, and in my head it was like, this can’t be a blog post, because, again, blogs you do want to keep it like snackable content – nice and tight, and Twitter posting, and even less, obviously. I really looked at it and said, like “What if there was no end to this concept, can I exhaust myself on it?” And, then I sort of went back and said, “Ok, what’s the meat here, what’s the structure?” Well, creating the structure for what I wanted to go through was also really good. Over the years I have sort of have, cumulatively, built these thing like when I speak, a lot of keynote speakers they’ve got 40 to 60 slides, that’s what they do. I’ve got 10,000 slides.

JH: Wow!

MJ: I build slides every day, like if there’s a great quote in Wired Magazine, I create a slide for it, and I bank it. And, I’ve got all these, I call it my master deck, it’s actually 20 files, or something like that. And, so, I ‘m always pulling and rearranging, and recreating, and I wanted to bring that, I bring that spirit when I speak, I wanted to bring that spirit to the book, too, where it was, again, different ideas and ways in which they flow together, and obviously in the book, I could structure it, too. First, it’s like a blog post where I’m doing like a self-promotional post one day, then like a critique on a news item the next day, it’s erratic – blogging is quite erratic.

JH: Mm Hmm.

MJ: But, I really looked at this and said, “Canvas, like white canvas, what would I paint?”

JH: Now, you did an interesting thing yesterday on one of your blog posts called, Asking for Help.

MJ: [Chuckles] Right.

JH: Let’s talk about that.

MJ: I’ve noticed a huge switch in blogging. When blogging started, it was actually, ‘me, me, me.’, that’s what it was. It was, “I’m doing this checkup, I’m speaking here”, that’s what blogging was – online journaling that you were just publishing to the world, And, if it wasn’t of interest to somebody, don’t follow me. That’s what it was, everybody was like that. And, there’s been a small shift in the past three years where it’s not ‘me, me, me’, it’s ‘you, you, you.’

JH: Mmm.

MJ: Which I great, I think that’s amazing cause it’s forced me to be more about journalists where I’m just providing total value to people. And then I sort of got trapped where I realized, like I‘ve got this book coming out, it’s like this weird new thing, you can’t be self-promotional blog, and people are like, “Look at him, shilling for his own stuff” – which is crazy, that’s what it is. And, I had this sort of moment where I realized I have to ask for help, because in this real world that we’re in right now, if what you’re saying is I can’t be self-promotional, then what do I do, wait around for mass media to come and cover the story, cover my book? Well, we all use blogs, because we’re trying to prove that mass media isn’t as powerful, it became this really weird thing, and I thought, there’s only one thing I can do, and that’s ask for help.

And, so, I didn’t ask people to really buy the book, it was one of them, obviously, but I asked them six basic things, “Can you buy the book, talk about it, can you blog about it, can you Tweet about it?” And, the reaction was thankfully really, really positive, and the book’s done well. But, I felt a little dirty even after posting it, I don’t know why, I love people even emailed on the side, and said, “This is your time.” And, I said in the post, “Yes, this is me shilling; yes, this is me being self-promotional”, but I didn’t know what else to do.

JH: Right. I think that’s the key, that you have that history, and that following of being helpful all along, so that when it comes time, when you do need help, you can ask for it and people will respond to it.

MJ: Well, I think that that’s the fundamental beauty of a real community, right, it’s like if you look at your neighbors, you tend to help those neighbors who’ve been there longest, and who have been helpful to you. We just moved into a new physical neighborhood, so I know what it’s like, it’s weird, it’s like well they don’t you, you don’t know them, and, so, it becomes this weird dance. You would think it was like that in the digital world, but what I’m actually seeing is that there is that part of it, but, I think there a lot of takers online, I really do. I think there area a lot of people who go, “All this great free content, I can take, take, take, and provoke, and do what I want”, but when it’s time to actually put money down somewhere, “Well, you’re being self-promotional, why should I give you money?” There’s actually a comment from someone who’s like more of an open source person, who said, “It’s ironic that Mitch’s asking for all this free publicity, but he’s charging for the book.”

Obviously, they don’t know me well, because the reality is every single day I’m just doing nothing but giving, whether it’s links, or thoughts, and, I’m not just giving, I’m sharing, I ‘m being part of the community.

So, I thought that that was weird, but the other side of it was, and it’s interesting with the book promotion, the publisher comes over and says, “Let’s release it free as a PDF”, and all this sort of stuff, and I was like, “No.” Like, ‘no, no, no. no.’ Because, I give free stuff every single day, all the time – audio, text, even my columns that are published I repost then there with links. I spend the time to link to it, and tag everything. And, I thought, if people want the book, they can buy it, and if they don’t want to buy the book, no problem, I’ll be here tomorrow with more new content for you – free!

JH: Right, because at what point, you’re building this stuff up, you’re building up your Facebook friends, you’re building up your Twitter following, what is the use, if you’re not going to use it. It’s almost like, when you have your life savings, and you’re saving, you’re saving, “Oh, I kind of had to do that, I bought an apartment in New York”, and its like, “Oh, my god, it’s all my savings.” But, then it’s something like, “Well, what are you saving it for?”

MJ: But that’s what you were saving it for. [Laughs]

JH: That’s what I’m saving it for. So, why do I have all these Twitter followers, I’m giving, giving, giving, and at some point if you have something of value, and you’ve shown a history of giving free value to these people, it’s ok to ask for help.

MJ: One of the things that I pulled out of another great book that just came out, it’s called, Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan and Julian Smith. And, they talk about a couple of things, one is ‘social proofing’, which is sort of like when you do make the ask, that’s the social proof of whether or not your community is strong. But, they talk a lot about sort of the idea of trust, and I think that’s a big thing, too, is my community trusts me, and I trust my community. And, so, I have hopes that if I’m doing anything self-promotional, they also know that it’s also to their betterment.

So, it’s not like, buy the book, because I’ve given you seven years of blogging, I’ve given you seven years of blogging, and there’s this book which has tons of new stuff in it, and if your so inclined to buy it – cool; and if you’re not, if you’re so inclined to talk about it – great, and if not, well, I’ll be here tomorrow with some more blog posts for you that you can grab, and do what you want with it. I don’t say that negatively, at all, I think that that’s the beauty of the community of people who rise up, people say. I spent a full day, like 18 hours, sending individual emails to people I know who have audience, and saying to them, “Now is the time, my book is coming out, what, in anything can you, would you be willing to interview me, can I interview you?” And, I was thinking, “Are you willing to read content for other people?” And, it was really interesting, some of the A-listers or internet celebrities who I’ve met where I don’t feel as comfortable, there’s a lot of other books on this, and then, it’s amazing, people who are way busier, way more well known, way wealthier, way more engaged, were doing it without even me asking them, out of the kindness of their heart.

We had a re-Tweet yesterday from M.C. Hammer, [chuckle] of all people. He’s got an audience of 1.3 million people. But, it really made me think that there are some people who also take themselves a little bit too seriously in this space. If you’ve got a couple of hundred thousand people following you on Twitter, that doesn’t mean much. In the grand scheme of things, you have to have, I think all communities should be reciprocating. I try to promote as much as I, I try and promote others, and it was sort of interesting to see who the real givers and takers are. And, some of the people we all see as big community people, I’d think we’d all be surprised to see how very selfish they actually are; and they’re really in it for themselves.

JH: Mm hmm.

MJ: And, my whole thing was I didn’t want to be that, and people, I think, know that I’m not that. But, it was a big thing on my head, like don’t ever want to be perceived as someone who is just taking, cause I’m not.

JH: Yup. You do a lot of speaking, and, I’m guessing some of my audience would say, “How do I become a good speaker?”, and one of the blog posts that I saw on your site was setting up a speaker page. Talk about that, I thought was a really great idea, that’s so obvious that people may not be as [cut off].

MJ: So obvious. Well it started over at onedegree.ca there. This debate brews up all the time online where they’re not enough female speakers in the tech and social media space. And, yeah, we know that. It’s for sure a male-dominated thing, and there area some amazing women who don’t get the opportunity they need to speak. And, you sort of watch the comments go, because, any time it has to do with that topic, you’re going to see a lot of comments back and forth. And, I absolutely agree that there’s definitely not a lot of female speakers; and, so, as the names were coming and going, this person and that person, this person, I was like, “Well, let me go check out who they are.” And, some of them I’ve never really heard of.

And, I went, and I have to tell you, 96% of the people didn’t have a speakers’ page – it’s like, nothing, not even close. And, it was really, really freaking me out, and, then I was like, “Ok, forget the gender issue, let’s just look at people who are saying their speakers, this and that, and, even then. And, so, here you have people saying, like, “I’m a great speaker, how come I never get asked to speak?” Well, because if even someone would, how do we even know you want to speak? Definitely, on my blog, or space, I don’t even know what it is anymore, it’s a blog, it’s a podcast – I have a speaking page, and it’s got my bio for speaking, it’s got images, it’s got video sample, it’s got testimonials from people, it’s got the topics I speak about, an abstract for them, how to contact me. It seems so basic, but, again, none of these people had it.

And, so, two things happen there – one is people say, “Well, I just want to be like a panelist.” But, even then, show me that you can be yourself on a panel. And the other thing is people go, “Well, I was interviewed on TV, and here’s my video clip.” And, the answer is no. So, what happens in my world is people come over to me and say, “Can you introduce me to your speakers’ bureau? I’ve been told that I would be a great motivational or business speaker.” And, I’m like, “Absolutely, send me a link that has a video, all the sort of source stuff”, and they go, “Oh, I don’t have that.” It sounds like me saying I want to be magician. [Laughter] It’s so random.

JH: Yeah, show me some tricks.

MJ: Go back, get me some video, and if it’s any good, I’m happy to forward it on. A 100% of the time, I‘ve never heard from the person, 100% of the time. And, so, it was going back and forth, and the comments, and, I was like, “It’s not a gender thing at all. It’s actually across the board. If you’re interested in speaking, that’s the basics.” And then, people say, “So, I have that. How come I’m not getting the gigs?” And the answer is the same reason why certain bands break and some don’t – it’s cause, “Well, you’re not that good!” Sometimes it’s hard to say, and, “Well, I’m a bit more shy.”

There’s Toastmasters, there’s practicing, there’re so many colleges that would love to have a guest speaker – get out there, practice, work with the coach. Hire a coach for a couple of bucks. Learn body language, learn how to build your content flow, there’s so many things about it. And in the end, I was just like, “Listen, go buy Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds; go get slide:ology, by Nancy Duarte; go get Nick Morgan’s book, Give your Speech. Change the World, and you’re done. Those are also great books, read them, do what they say, and you’ll be on your way. The amazing thing about it is, because there’s so few people who have great speakers pages, I think the ones who do it will just jump ahead because it’s a commodity to get somebody to get up there and deliver a keynote or presentation, or be on a panel that engages a Twitter-crazy, iPhone-nuts, Blackberry-insane audience is a commodity. Not a commodity, sorry, it’s a non-commodity,

JH: It’s a rarity, a rarity.

MJ: You think that was the word I was looking for. And, it boggles my mind, I gotta tell you Jim, like how few people, even on this list, and, just guys, girls, the whole thing, gay, straight, black, white, Asian, whatever it is, the majority of people, really, and the speakers you and I know well, the Web 2.0 speakers, get up there and speak from their hearts. And, it’s very powerful if you’re in an audience where people are following you on Twitter, but when you get up in front of a Google, or a Walmart, or who knows who else, you gotta be polished to the point if you know the beginning, middle, end, you know how to deliver the message, and so that the audience will be engaged. And it is, it is a rarity, so, I’m always like, “Hey, you want to speak, great, but you gotta do the basics, too.” You also gotta let people know you’re alive; no on knows, how would I even know that you want to speak?

JH: Great advice, great advice. What is some other advice, I know many of my listeners are in online marketing, social media, do you have some case studies that would be valuable for marketing professionals, maybe like stuff from the books that you hit on?

MJ: Yeah, I think there are the standard case studies that we’ve, sort of, come to know and love. I was in the car today in New York City, and turned to the New York Times, and saw that Gary Vaynerchuk has a huge photo spread on him on the food section with all the Wine Library TV, and he’s sort of one of those guys who are the Craig Newmarks of the world, there are those stories, they’re in Huffingtons of the world. I think the best stories have really yet to be told; I think one of the main things I really learned in writing the book for businesses is that we’re in the middle of it, and it’s really to kind of show you a conclusive white paper-type thing that’s really going to move the needle for like a Chief Marketing Officer, or even and entrepreneur. And, so, part of it for, the big case study is really about trying stuff. In the book I talk a lot about what versus why, and I think that’s the best place to start is people tend to start with, “What should I be doing on Twitter, what should I be doing on Facebook?”, and it’s the wrong question. It should be ‘why’, “Why should you be on Facebook, why should you be on Twitter?” And, the logic is, “Why is strategy, what is a tactic?”

And, I think a lot of times we jump to tactics really, really quickly; strong strategy always wins over time. And, so, my advice is like forget the case study, is think about your strategy ‘why’, and why people love you, why they connect, but also, like, why? Like, I’m a writer, for me blogging and Twitter was the way. I’m not a video guy, I’ve got a Flip, I’ve got a Kodak, I’ve got all these HD tiny cameras I still don’t carry around cause I’m not a fan of video, it’s not my thing, I don’t’ like to video edit, I’m bad at it. So, I’m always of the mind set of focusing on the strategy, which also ties me to what we talked about earlier is the consistency – if it ties well into your strategy, the consistency becomes really easy because it’s working. The more it works the more you’ll do it.

JH: Yeah. And that’s what you do. Your agency builds marketing strategies for companies. So, what do you do on Twitter, you Tweet about different marketing strategies people can do, and it’s funny cause that’s so obvious the answer when I tell people, “Well, how should I use Twitter, what should I do”, and for example, here at Conde Nast, it’s, well, “How does Conde Nast make money?” Well, we make page views, when people come to the website we sell banners on it, and we get page views. So what we do is Tweet about a cool article, and it links back to our pages. And, if you’re a speaker, then you talk about your speaking, and if you’re strategy you talk about strategy. If you’re Dell and you sell, you have products that have been refurbished, and you send a link to refurbished products – you do what your business model is.

MH: Yeah, I tell a story, I think I tell a story in the book, if not it’s on my blog. I love, I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to my laptops and stuff, and I was switching to another ultraportable, and I was unsure about solid state hard drives just cause they’re so really expensive. And, I went on Twitter and I was like, “Looking to buy a new ultraportable, considering solid state hard drives, what are you’re thoughts versus standard worth it – yes, no?” And, some Dell people had hopped on and answered the question; didn’t promote latitudes or anything like that, it was just sort of helping me, and I have to tell you, in all of the 10,000 people that follow me, I really trusted their feedback. It actually was quite good compared to some other techy guys who I know, who I thought would be on, as well. Ironically, I actually did buy Dell in the end, which is sort of a weird part of the story, but, what was interesting to me is they weren’t pushing, they were being helpful as computer experts that aligned me for who I stand for, my personal brand, to them a lot better.

And, I think people forget that, and I tell a story in the book, I make up a case study of a pen shop, and, it’s like, “Should the pen shop blog or not?” And, it was like, “Well, who wants to hear that a new Pilot or Sharpie pen is out?” And I pushed further down the industry, and I say, “But, if they did a blog on the art of writing, would that be interesting?” And, the answer is yes. Like your eyes lit up, and my eyes lit up, is like, “Yeah, I’d like to hear stories about writers and how they write.”

And, so, we also tend to forget, we tend to talk about our products and services, but, like the stuff that I do really, I talk about the industry. And, my hopes are that there’s a funnel effect, or halo effect where the more I talk about the industry, or the more empowered I make you as a marketer or someone else, that when it comes time to choose a digital agency, you’ll at least consider Twist Image in your portfolio.

JH: Mm Hmm.

MJ: And, that’s really for me the difference is, I never I talk about my products and services ever, in fact, never. So, that’s another angle to there, too, that I like people to consider.

JH: And what was the answer on the hard drives?

MJ: The answer’s definitely solid state hard drive, I gotta tell you, my brother actually bought a Dell, the same time as me, without solid state, and I thought it was broken, it was so slow. For those asking, it’s worth the investment, these things dance. We are getting to the point where computers are almost like light switches – you turn it on, and it’s practically ready to go.

JH: That was actually my final question. So, a lot of my listeners are also gadget freaks, and I know after we had dinner after your last speech, there was a whole discussion about like what laser pointer you used, and remote controls, and tell us about some of the things that you do as road warrior and a presenter.

MJ: Well, there are a couple of things, I sort of like my man purse, my backpack, that’s a big thing, too, so, I’m currently sporting a Briggs and Riley that I love, it’s a real ballistic nylon, it feels great, like it, feels very manly for me. I love my Logitech remote presenter, it’s the 2.47 GHz, but it’s got a couple of little things that I love, one is that it has a timer in it which gives me a silent buzz at five minutes and zero minutes, which is just amazing, so I can actually see that I’m actually speaking for 45 minutes, I know exactly where I’m at in the presentation, I know how much longer I have, it fells really good, a great little device.

I’m still a big fan of my M-Audio MicroTrack which is sort of a digital two-track studio that I carry around. It’s almost like the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it’s literally a studio, so I do all my audio interviews using it. We should have done it for this, but it would have sounded a lot better, trust me. I love that, I love my Internet Rocket Sticks, or Portable Internet everywhere I go, you dump in the SIM card, it’s pretty fast, 3G, it’s not blazing speed, but it’s quite good. I could go on and on. I, literally, was just walking up 5^th, going into all the Best Buys, and stuff like that. I just really…

JH: Maybe we’ll get a list. You should, that’s what Daniel Odio, who you talked to, had a ‘social media kit’, he called it. And, he had just like a dozen different things.

MJ: I’ll tell you something, on my blog, I just had a post called, What’s in My Bag, because there was this amazing, I don’t know if you’ve seen this widget on Amazon, have you seen it?

JH: Mm Hmm.

MJ: Amazon’s got this great widget where you can choose stuff, and then it just creates like a slideshow and you can put comments on it. So, I literally created this slideshow of the stuff I keep in my bag. And it’s there, it’s literally everything, it even includes my subscription to Wired Magazine.

JH: [Laughs] Excellent, I’ll have to link to that. Well, thanks so much for coming in, Mitch. Where can people find out more about you, your company, and Twitter, and buy the book?

MJ: Sure, well, first of all, great seeing you again. We should say that we would never have met were it not for social media.

JH: That’s correct.

MJ: We were connected through the smartest man in the world, Saul Colt, who I think connects everybody in the end of the world, right?

JH: He does.

MJ: Through Twitter, and then you actually came down; we met and had a great time. I just want to also put that out there that people think that this is just about people in their basement, or whatever, and I think the real value is this, which is, we met, I think, digitally, three months ago, and we’ve already seen each other twice in person, so, that’s better than some of my friends in the world, and my, sort of, long-term friends.

Um, twistimage.com/blog is everything for me to the catchall, it’s the blog, the podcast; I’ve also got another show that I do every two weeks in my podcast called, Media Hacks, where it’s me Chris Brogan, Julian Smith, C.C. Chapman, Chris Penn, and Hugh McGuire, and we just talk. It’s almost like a really noisy, inside baseball on the new media landscape, it’s been a lot of fun, too – it’s all right there for you.

JH: And the book?

MJ: Yeah, same place, twistimage.com/blog, or twistimage.com/book. In stores, definitely available online, and, yeah, if you’re so inclined, check it out. I think everybody will get a lot out of it, and, if not, pass it on to someone who keeps bothering you with those annoying questions of what should they be doing on Twitter.

JH: Great. Well, thanks again, Mitch.

MJ: Awesome, thanks for your time.

More »

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

What does Mitch Joel have that almost every other “social media expert” doesn’t have?

Well, to answer that question, we have to look at the things that Mitch does have:

- He is certainly a great interview
While my Julia Allison interview is still my most downloaded episode ever, Saul Colt is the smartest man in the world, and my talk with Sarah Prevette confirmed she is the very definition of Malcolm Gladwell’s “connector,” my conversation with Mitch was one of the most engaging and interesting talks on the current state of internet marketing I’ve had to date.

- He certainly has a great background
How many other people started out as a music journalist with their first assignment ever being an interview with Tommy Lee from Motley Crue?

- He certainly has the new media resume to back up what he has to say
Considering he owns his own digital marketing agency called Twist Image, has been blogging since 2003 (which is why we discussed consistency over relevance), and also does a podcast.

- He certainly has a unique perspective on book publishing
Why did he go through a traditional publisher with his new book, Six Pixels of Separation? When I asked him if he thought about self-publishing with any of the new and impressive tools that are available, or distributing the book as a PDF or some other form, he said no. Why was that? He was writing a book for people that read books!

It seems quite obvious, but if some is dialed in and is already reading his work online via his blog and listening to his podcast digitally, they’re already aware of him. This is for the guy browsing in Barnes & Noble or running through the airport that wants a marketing book and has never heard of him. And get this, he ENJOYED the book writing process. Not many authors will tell you that.

- He certainly fits the modern geek profile
We discuss the tools of the modern road warrior, the pros and cons of SSD vs traditional hard drives, laptop choices and key features in laser pointers. You can see the list of geek electronics via “What’s in his bag.”

- OK, so what about public speaking?
Mitch is an accomplished speaker, having presented to Starbucks and Microsoft, sharing a stage with people ranging from Bill Clinton to Dr. Phil, and drawing from his arsenal of thousands of slides to wow any audience.

Maybe you’re an expert in your field as well, and want to do more speaking, or teach a class, or be on a panel.

- So what is the thing that Mitch has that nearly every other potential speaker is missing?

Answer: A “speaker’s page” … basically a bio page on your website that has some or all of the following elements:

- Bio section (or link to your full “About” page) that tells who you are
- List of places that you have spoken before
- Video examples of your speeches
- List of topics that you present on within your realm of expertise
- Testimonials from people that you have spoken with before
- A way to get in touch with you

Wow, that was obvious, right? But think about it… without all these elements, how can a company or conference have any confidence that you are a prepared professional that can pull this off? It’s like a resume for your public speaking persona.

I see this as a huge opportunity for people looking to get into this field, raise their profile, or try to generate additional revenue.

Also see: Mitch’s blog post on speaker pages | Mitch Joel’s speaker page

Look at it this way…

1) Fear of public speaking is right up there with fear of snakes and fear of dying. If you LIKE public speaking, you are ahead of 90% of the game.

2) A lot of people are bad at public speaking. If you practice, can weave a good story, and are prepared, you jump ahead of all of those people.

3) If you can put it all together and demonstrate to a potential company or conference that you can do this through a speakers page when no one else is, that should put you to the top of the list.

Mitch goes on to talk about several other great tactics, including books to read and gadgets to use.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below: — we start talking speeches at the 22:54 mark.

View the full transcript of the Mitch Joel interview.

HopkinsonReport on Twitter

More »