Social Media is Not a Fad

Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest may turn out to be ephemeral (remember MySpace?) but social media is as permanent as the Internet. Marketers who haven’t figured it out yet or who think it will go away when the kids find some new shiny objects to play with need to think again.

There is no shortage of newspapers, magazines, and corporate web sites on the Internet, but the majority of communication online takes place in the context of social media. That’s especially true for young people. You might still think Facebook and Twitter are newfangled, but as far as young people are concerned, email is the new landline.

Social media isn’t just a way to keep in touch with friends and to make new friends. It’s increasingly where people learn about new products and services. If you doubt this, just broaden your definition of social media slightly and you’ll see why this is true.

Look at Amazon. It started out as a bookstore, but today it sells almost everything now, from car stereos and video games to groceries and kitchen cleaning supplies. Just about the only things you can’t buy on Amazon are motor vehicles and real estate.

Every product on Amazon has a place for customer reviews, and only the newest and least-selling products have no reviews. Customer reviews are so ubiquitous there that you can learn something about a product even if it has not been reviewed. At the very least, you know it’s not selling.

Amazon isn’t exactly a social media site, but there’s no question that its vast customer review section is social media. It’s an online media space where individuals are given a microphone and a soap box to talk to a virtually limitless number of other people about nearly every conceivable product. Call it something other than social media if you want, but it certainly isn’t traditional media.

No one would dispute that Goodreads is a social media site. It’s where bibliophiles review books for each other. The exact same conversations take place on Amazon.

Nothing beats word of mouth marketing if you can earn it. Sticking with Amazon for now, consider that some of the best-selling books have launched to the top of the charts with no traditional marketing whatsoever. Hardly anyone had ever heard of science-fiction author Hugh Howey when he self-published a post-apocalyptic short story called Wool, but a handful of people stumbled upon it, loved it, told their friends it was great, and praised it in reader reviews. A slightly larger handful of people then found it, told their friends about it, and wrote more reader reviews. This continued in an ever-widening circle and convinced the author that he should expand his short story into a full-length book and then into a trilogy. It wasn’t long before Ridley Scott optioned the film and made Howey rich.

All thanks to word-of-mouth marketing on the Internet.

This kind of word-of-mouth marketing is everywhere on the Internet now. Amazon’s customers rely on it not only when deciding which books to read, but also which smartphone and which set of headphones to purchase.

Amazon is just one example. All kinds of local businesses are made or destroyed by customer reviews on sites like Angie’s List, Urban Spoon, Trip Advisor, and Yelp.

This is revolutionary.

Naturally occurring word-of-mouth marketing has been with us for thousands of years, but in the pre-Internet world we could only spread the word to friends, family members, and acquaintances. Today, however, one person can broadcast a message to hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of strangers.

If you’re still skeptical about social media marketing, let that sink in and reconsider web sites like Facebook and Twitter. They weren’t designed up to sell anything like Amazon, nor were they designed for word-of-mouth marketing like Trip Advisor and Yelp, but millions of people live online in these virtual spaces, and they talk about everything there, including, sometimes, which products and services they love, hate and why.

The Internet is simply where people talk to each other now, and since most of us don’t have a column in the New York Times, most of that talk is on social media sites. These places are the new office break rooms, the new corner coffee shops, the new sports bars, the new grocery store lines and the new community centers. They are the new billboards, the new classified ad pages, and the new bumper stickers. They are where almost all digital discourse takes place.

This will only go away if the Internet goes away, and that’s only likely to happen if a giant asteroid smashes into the planet.

So ask yourself: do you want to be part of those conversations or not?

How to Silence Your Inner Critic

Writer’s block is a myth, but writer’s paralysis isn’t.

Many years ago, when I was still a baby writer, I attended a regular writer’s workshop in Eugene, Oregon, taught by professionals.

The woman who ran it, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, then-editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, asked everyone in the room to raise their hands if they’d ever experienced writer’s block or something similar. A dozen or so people—half of us, myself included—raised their hands.

She then asked how many people are or were English majors in college. The exact same people—again, myself included—raised their hands.

Everyone in the room was stunned.

Every single person who had spent time in a university English Department suffered from “writer’s block” at least sometimes, yet no one else did.

What was going on? Was “writer’s block” somehow taught to people in college?

Yep.

Not on purpose, of course. Literature courses are all about criticizing what somebody else wrote. If you spend enough time criticizing other people’s work, and if you’ve internalized the fact that even Shakespeare and Milton are subject to criticism, your own inner critic can mushroom to Godzilla size and paralyze you even if you’re writing something that would never be confused with “literature,” such marketing copy or even blog posts.

You need the inner critic when you’re editing, but it should never be the size of Godzilla, and it needs to shut up entirely when you’re in creative mode.

Start with Draft Zero. There is no getting around it: you must produce a first draft, and your first draft will be sloppy. As Robert Graves said, there is no such thing as good writing. There is only good rewriting.

But even the most seasoned professionals can feel a bit of anxiety, trepidation, or paralysis while writing a rough draft.

One solution is extraordinarily simple. Think of the first draft as Draft Zero. Only after you’ve cleaned up that mess do you have a first draft. If you can internalize this idea, your inner critic will leave you alone and let you get started because it doesn’t matter if Draft Zero is littered with problems.

Pre-write. If that doesn’t work for you, try this instead: create a document on your computer for the sole purpose of pre-writing. This is not the first draft of your copywriting, content marketing, blog post, story or article. It’s just a warm-up. It’s practice. Just start typing whatever it is you’re going to write about later.

It’s going to suck. So what? You’re not writing yet. You’re just stretching.

Do this for ten, twenty, maybe thirty minutes. Then go have a cup of coffee and look at your warm-up again later.

You might be surprised to discover that you already have a serviceable draft

If not, who cares? Some of what you wrote during your warm-up will be worth preserving and copying and pasting into an actual draft. And you will have produced those parts without the inner critic sticking his nose in because you weren’t actually writing. You were just typing.

Dare to be bad. Best-selling author Dean Wesley Smith used to tape a hand-written note to his computer monitor that said, “Dare to be bad.” It was his way of shutting up his inner critic so he could get on with his work and clean up any messy parts later.

His subconscious—and yours—knows what it’s doing and can produce at least some decent material on the first go-around if it can be liberated from the need to be perfect.

Daring to be bad, pre-writing, and starting with a Draft Zero are just three different ways of hog tying your inner critic, putting duct tape over its mouth, and tossing it into the basement. You don’t want to kill your inner critic. You need it for editing and cleanup. But it will paralyze you if its reading over your shoulder as you type your first draft.

Especially if you majored in English.

How to Beat Procrastination at Work

Everyone procrastinates sometimes, but creative people seem more prone to it than others. especially writers. Not just novelists and poets, but also copywriters and journalists.

It’s a universal flaw in human psychology, though. Graphic designers, musicians, and even plumbers sometimes succumb to it.

The good news is that it’s surprisingly easy to beat.

Just do it. The muse is a myth. If you sit around and wait for inspiration to strike, you’ll hardly ever get anything done.

Motivation comes after you start. As psychologist David Burns wrote in his landmark book, Feeling Good, “You have to prime the pump. Then you will begin to get motivated, and the fluids will flow spontaneously.”

First comes action. Then comes motivation, followed by more action.

All working professionals know this, but many of us are prone to forgetting and have to be reminded over and over again. Consider this your weekly reminder.

If all you need to do is work for five minutes, just sit down and work for five minutes.

Science-fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson forces himself to write 50 words a day and no more. Hardly a tall order. This paragraph alone includes more than 50 words, so you can see at a glace how little that actually is. If he’d rather do something else for the rest of the day when he reaches the minimum, he gives himself permission to call it a day without guilt.

If he wrote only 50 words a day, he wouldn’t get very much done. But he rarely writes only 50. Once he gets started, he’s almost always motivated to keep going.

It sounds like a lazy person’s work ethic, but paradoxically his method has made him one of the most prolific writers in the world with more than 120 published books. Because unlike most writers, he produces something every day without exception.

Don’t eat the elephant. Imagine if someone delivered an elephant to your house and ordered you to eat the whole thing. You might feel disgusted. You’d certainly feel overwhelmed. Never mind taking out a knife and a fork, you’d probably rather do anything but even think about eating that elephant.

If someone were to cut that elephant into half-pound steaks, however, and order you to eat just one per day, it wouldn’t be so bad. You might even feel terrific. Hey, a freezer full of steaks!

So when you’re facing a large project that will last days, weeks, or even months, thinking of it as an elephant you have to eat is a guaranteed motivation killer. You can’t eat an elephant. A single steak, though, that’s easy. Possibly even delicious.

Limit yourself. Don’t just cut that elephant into steaks to make it feel less overwhelming. Actually limit yourself to eating just one per day and no more. Then cut it into pieces and limit yourself again to small chunks throughout the day.

Here’s how it works. Force yourself to take a break after an hour. If you’re feeling particularly overwhelmed, force yourself to take a break after just thirty minutes or even twenty. If you’re sick, require yourself to take a break after ten. Get up and go for a walk, make a cup of coffee, do a crossword puzzle, or anything else you enjoy after your time is up even if you aren’t finished working yet.

If you force yourself to take breaks, your productivity will actually go up, partly because your mind has a chance to rest, but also because it’s easier to get started when you know the break is coming ahead of time.

Avoid should statements. If you’re procrastinating and beating up on yourself, don’t tell yourself you should get to work. That word implies consequences from your boss, your clients, your editors, or whoever else.

Use carrots rather than sticks. Do it for yourself. Tell yourself that you’ll feel better after you start. All those feelings of frustration and angst will vanish just minutes after you start. On some level you know this is true no matter how much you’d rather go to the mall or watch Leave it to Beaver. Wouldn’t you rather feel good about yourself sooner rather than later?

For Tech Marketing, the West is Best

Forbes recently conducted a survey of the top US cities for marketing jobs. As expected, New York and San Francisco topped the list, but the two cities are a continent apart in more ways than one.

New York City is America’s media and publishing capital, as well as its largest city, so it makes sense that many of the biggest advertising and marketing agencies locate their headquarters there. The high tech sector, however, is based overwhelmingly on the West Coast, and most tech firms don’t bother with the big Madison Avenue agencies.

The San Francisco Bay Area is the tech marketing capital of America, but Seattle comes in a close second, and there almost as many high tech and marketing jobs available per capita in Portland.

Until late in the 20th century, Portland and Seattle were both gritty resource towns. With the relative decline of industries like logging and mining, the two cities had little choice but to reinvent themselves if they wanted to prosper. With the rise of Silicon Valley a few hundred miles to the south, becoming the industry’s adjust cities made perfect sense.

Both high technology and marketing suit us out here. The West is still the “America” of America, and the tech industry has been on the bleeding edge of innovation and economic dynamism since its inception. It naturally attracts the descendents of the risk-taking pioneers who settled the West following Lewis and Clark’s expedition.

Advertising and marketing, meanwhile, have always attracted creative people, and the West Coast—like New York City—pulls them in like a gravity well.

We at reddbug are based almost entirely in the West—in Las Vegas, Utah, Texas, and in all three states on the West Coast. Most of us wouldn’t dream of living or working anywhere else.