Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

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What if no one tells you that you're wrong?

On the most recent Media Hacks, we were discussing the Crocs extortion case, and this thought popped into my head:

The most dangerous part of social media is that it’s inherently self-selecting towards agreement, which means that fewer and fewer people will tell you that you’re wrong.

What do I mean? Simple law of attraction. We follow people we like. We read the opinions of those people we generally agree with because it’s pleasant to do so. We friend and become friends with those of similar perspectives, and we attract people of like minds.

When you surround yourself – or are surrounded by – people who agree with you 95% of the time, it can seriously distort your own self perception. When nearly every reply to your blog posts is “I agree!” and “OMG you’re so right!” you can start to believe your own press and develop an inflated sense of self worth, which in turn leads to things like blogger extortion, a la the Crocs case. When you read and listen to only the things that you like, it naturally moves your opinions to be more extreme.

You will naturally attract people of like mind. That’s okay. But as your efforts in new media and social media continue to reap rewards, take time out to self-balance and self-check. Re-center yourself by talking with the best of friends – the friend who is wholly unafraid to call BS on you and tell you when you’re wrong about something. Listen to that friend, that opinion, and use it to help you discern where you can improve.

Neil Gorman talked about this at Podcasters Across Borders – how too many people are afraid to disagree with “thought leaders” and “social media superstars”. I asked him the same thing I ask you – no matter how valuable you perceive someone is, the folks who you perceive as leaders desperately need you to call BS on us when we are wrong (me especially), so that we can continue to think critically, to learn, to grow ourselves.

We need your dissent. We need your clarity. We need your honesty. I in turn will be honest in my dealings with you. During the discussions about race and gender in social media at PodCamp Boston and afterwards, I was delighted to hear that a good number of people disagreed with my views, in some cases exceptionally vigorously. Good! The different perspective lets me see more and understand more, and I’m happier and better for it. I may still not agree, but I am better informed.

I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes from Barack Obama – we can disagree without being disagreeable. When I’m wrong, tell me. When you’re wrong, I’ll tell you. When we’re both wrong, hopefully someone will tell us.

Agreed?

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August 17, 2009
Getting better answers out of your head

Did you know that your head is basically a giant computer? It’s true. It’s a massive parallel processor that has individual circuits which are not terribly fast (compared to silicon CPUs in your laptop) but that are meshed together to form an incredible supercomputer capable of processing incredible detail.

That said, your head-based computer comes with no manual and the interface is kind of clunky. As a result, many people – possibly you – aren’t getting the most out of it, just as thousands of quad-core silicon computers capable of incredible feats around the world are currently being used to play Solitaire.

How do you improve the output of your head-based computer, your mind? The same way you do on your silicon machine – with better inputs. Let me give you an example.

Have you ever been sitting around with a friend who is single and they lament,

“Why can’t I find a good man/woman?”

While you nod or sympathize or offer hugs and beer, your friend is giving their mind the wrong inputs.

Linguistically, they just asked their mind for a list of reasons why they can’t do something – and their mind will answer. If you’ve ever seen an episode of Star Trek, where the captain of the ship asks the ship’s computer a question, you can imagine the following in the captain’s voice:

Captain: Computer, why can’t I find a good woman?
Computer: [random beeping sounds]
Computer: The following is a list of 18 different reasons why you can’t find a good partner.
Computer: Reason 1: you are 24.5 pounds over your ideal weight for a person of your age and gender.
Computer: Reason 2: your chronic habit of spitting fluids out your nose while you laugh is statistically unappealing to the majority of your desired demographic.
Computer: Reason 3: approximately 44% of your wardrobe is older than 22 years beyond the current fashion trend.
Computer: Reason 4: your hairpiece adhesive has malfunctioned.

… and so on. Get the idea?

When you ask yourself a question about why you can’t, why something bad always happens to you, why your day/week/month/life is going so terribly, your mind will give you the exact answers to that question. You will get the answer to the question you asked, even if the answer is counterproductive.

Logically, the way to get better answers is to ask better questions:

– How can I turn around this situation and make it a win?
– How can I set this up so that we both walk away winners?
– What three things do I need to change to win that guy’s/girl’s attention?
– What can I learn from this scenario?
– What do I respect about that person’s opinion, even though I violently disagree with it?
– What little thing can I do today, right now to improve my blog readership?

Ask yourself questions that encourage your conscious and subconscious minds to focus on the solutions and outcomes that you want. It’s hard – very hard at first – so make sure you verbalize to yourself. You can even throw in an undo. When you catch yourself asking a counterproductive question, literally say to yourself, undo – the question I really meant to ask is… and then ask the question that will give you the solution you need.

You are in charge of the computer between your ears. It’s the same general hardware and software that Einstein, Mozart, Hawking, Obama, Lincoln, and billions of other people have. What they are capable of, what their mental computers can generate in terms of results, you can also generate as long as you use the machine correctly and effectively.

Try it out. Ask the best questions of yourself that you can. I won’t ask what’s the worst that can happen, because I want you to ask yourself, what’s the BEST that can happen?

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August 14, 2009
Winning in the Red Ocean

Beth Dunn got me thinking in the comments on my previous post about gender, race, and social media. Blue Ocean Strategy makes total sense and is the easiest way to win in a disruptive environment. You occupy the empty playing field, set the rules, norms, and customs, and make your own game. Newcomers to the field see whatever you’ve done as the norm and suddenly the idea is the institution – and you’re running the show. That’s the ideal.

What if, though, you don’t have a choice? What if it’s a red ocean and by circumstance or necessity you don’t have the luxury of moving to a blue ocean? How do you win when the odds are stacked against you in every way possible? Here’s a few thoughts from ninjutsu.

1. No perimeter is 100% secure. When it comes to finding your way into a C level office to have an opinion heard or finding your way to a job interview, there are gatekeepers, keymasters, etc. No perimeter is fully secure. There is almost always a way in.

Some thoughts: neutralize the gatekeeper, or even better, co-opt the gatekeeper. Find a way to ally yourself with a gatekeeper and then you’ve got your own personal concierge. If the gatekeeper is also an advisor, so much the better. Find the weak spot on the perimeter and press until you’re through.

2. Cultivate assets early and often. This is an old, old ninja strategy called katsura otoko, where you put an agent into an enemy territory long before – as in years or decades before – you need them. Disguised as a member of the community, they secretly gather information and recruit new allies to your army, but they’re rarely pressed into service until a critical moment.

You know all those junior people at corporations, the interns, the entry level folks? Find the promising ones in your own company or your competitor’s company and give them a hand. Mentor them. Help them out where you can in subtle ways. As time passes, you’ll not only gain their trust but you’ll also rise in power in the company along with them. In a few years, that entry level assistant may be EVP, and your friendship and efforts will have gotten you farther inside than you could possibly have otherwise done.

3. Look for crisis to be helpful. In old ninjutsu, the joei no jutsu strategy was to send in your infiltration teams to an area under severe crisis, like when an army was about to invade. The local warlord, desperate to conscript as many troops as possible, grabbed everyone they could with minimal or no background checks. What would be cautious recruitment in peacetime became haphazard carelessness in wartime. As a result, ninja agents got swept up into the enemy ranks and were positioned to gather information or conduct sabotage.

Every company facing a crisis of some kind looks for as many resources as possible, from hiring new employees to pulling in outside consultants. In a PR crisis, any friendly voice is welcomed. These are the times when you deploy your forces, volunteering, advocating, and being present and available to help. Putting yourself on someone’s radar in good times can be tough, as they have no need for you. Putting yourself on a VP’s radar in a time of crisis can secure your position of influence rapidly.

None of these strategies are exclusive to a red ocean environment, but they work well in nearly any environment due to human nature. If you as someone who is underrepresented want to break down barriers without burning bridges, consider looking at these and many other infiltration and subversion methods to sneak your way past glass ceilings and locked doors to the prize that you covet. If you as a small business want to win against much larger competitors and difficult conditions, these strategies have been proven time and again in the highest stakes contests of all on the battlefield.

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August 13, 2009
Arguing against your limitations

One of the most interesting conversations at PodCamp Boston 4 was on the lawn, a discussion about race, gender, and social media. Lots of different viewpoints, from a belief in a glass ceiling in social media to an equally strong belief in the democratization of media and the power of us all to break out and succeed.

If you’ve known me for a while, you know squarely where I stand. I’m nearly antisocial on the entire topic of self-imposed limitations.

“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.” – Richard Bach

If you believe there’s a glass ceiling, there is.

If you believe there’s someone holding you down, you will act as though there is.

If you believe that life is unfair and that you’ll never succeed, you won’t. I guarantee it, because whatever success you have you’ll subconsciously sabotage anyway.

I fundamentally believe in two tenets: first, you are statistically more likely to succeed if you’re awesome, and second, if you’re not swimming the blue ocean, you’re dead meat. Let’s tackle these in reverse.

Blue ocean strategy is a popular marketing concept that’s so obvious, it’s amazing someone had to write a book about it. Red oceans – oceans filled with blood and sharks – are where idiots try to do business. They see a crowded space and try to jump in the crowd, yell louder, cut prices lower, claim unfair competition, and generally get eaten by the bigger sharks. Red ocean strategy is opening a fourth pizza shop in a strip mall. The only ones who win in red ocean strategy are the biggest, baddest sharks.

Blue ocean strategy says swim where the oceans are clear, blue, and non-competitive. There are niches for everything, and a decent number of them are profitable. This is where you do business, because it’s much easier being profitable when you have no competition.

The insurance against competition is the second part – being awesome. When I say that what matters isn’t between your legs but between your ears, I’m not being snarky. If you have awesome on your side, race, gender, religion – none of it matters. People want awesome. People want to buy from awesome, and will pay a price premium for awesome.

The real problem, the problem we’re too often too polite to say, is that most of the time, we’re not awesome. Most of the time, what we have to sell or offer actually sucks. Believe me, I sell student loans. I know what it’s like to market a product that completely sucks. Thus, we have to gussy up our total suckage in the trappings of awesome in the hopes of fooling the less clever. “Ooh, this doorknob doesn’t actually work but it has a Facebook fan page!”

If you believe your race, gender, or other defining demographic factor is a limitation in your efforts, then that means one of two things: you’re either swimming in bloody red ocean, in which case you’re an idiot (regardless of gender, race, etc.) for not moving to clear waters, or the product, service, or idea you have sucks. Sorry. There’s no neat and kind way to say that.

Barack Obama didn’t become President of the United States by whining that the white man was holding him down. He made his own game, leveraged all the technology like no one else ever had before, and swam the blue ocean to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

someone didn’t become lead organizer of the first and oldest PodCamp by demanding a chance because she’s got a vagina. She got there because she’s got a brain, got there by being awesome, by always delivering, by always getting done whatever needed to get done, and when the time came for Chris Brogan and I to turn over the reins, her record – irrespective of gender – spoke for itself.

Look carefully at all of the tools of social media. Has Twitter ever said, sorry, you’re black, you can’t have more than 1,000 followers because only white people should have lots of followers? Has Facebook ever said, sorry, you can’t create a fan page because you’re a woman and women shouldn’t have fans? When you download MySQL, PHP, or jQuery, do any of the tools say, sorry, you’re Muslim and MySQL only works for God-fearing Christians?

No.

All of the tools and technology are available to everyone. You have complete and total equality in terms of tools and raw opportunity to make your own game. How you use those tools, what results you create are only limited by your talents and your self imposed limitations.

You are more than your limitations. You are much better than you think, but you have to awaken that inside you. If you get out of your own way and shatter your limiting beliefs, you’ve won half the battle.

I’ll finish with this thought, a lyric from Jewel:

No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from.

Every moment, every ounce of energy you spend on your limitations is time and energy you don’t have to spend being awesome, swimming your way through the blue ocean to success.

I wish you limitless quantities of awesome and blue waters, no matter what gender, race, or religion you are.

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August 11, 2009
Breaking the shackles on your potential at PodCamp Boston 4

If there was one overarching theme in the entire weekend of PodCamp Boston 4 that kept occurring over and over again for me, it was the theme of shackled potential being freed. Everyone I met was incredible, wonderful, kind, and seeking answers to burning questions, which pleased me to no end. Even the veterans, the old timers, had a wonderful fire in them burning for more than what they’d been getting from online and offline channels.

What really struck me, though, was this idea of shackled potential being freed. From the lawn discussion under a beautiful sky to deep conversations on the beach (yes, PodCamp Boston 4 had a BEACH, so there!), to sessions and discussions about technology, marketing, and achievement, everyone brought with them limitations. Things they believed they could not do, things that seemed out of reach for them, things that were impossible – so many of the conversations revolved around this theme.

What was more interesting to watch, what was in many cases truly inspiring, was seeing how other members of the community stepped up to help out, whether it was lending advice about optimizing a web site, connecting new friends together, trying difficult or uncomfortable new things – many, many people stepped up to help, and more still took that giant step outside their comfort zone.

I hope that for many of those folks, PodCamp Boston 4 was the crucible, the anvil on which they made a first crack in the self-imposed shackles on their potential. Everyone that I spoke with personally, everyone who had a story to share, has incredible, unbelievable potential to achieve, to be what they’ve set their hearts on. For a few folks, it may be coming to peace with parts of themselves, while for others it may be material success or social good. No matter what, know that breaking those limitations is possible and the rewards for doing so will defy what you can imagine.

I want to highlight one story that I think is a good example of potential broken free of its chains, about PodCamp Boston 4’s lead organizer this year. Two years and change ago, I met someone virtually at Matthew Ebel’s concerts in Second Life. When I met her, that was about all we had in common. She was working a dead end job (phone service for an online florist) living in a dead end neighborhood, going nowhere fast from minimum wage job to minimum wage job. Chel knew that there was more possible out there somewhere, but was fairly certain it wasn’t for people like her.

Through a fairly short apprenticeship and an incredible amount of courage in the face of the unknown, she made leap upon leap, first moving out of her situation, finding her way north (eventually to Boston), working insanely hard doing virtual assistant and admin work to pay the bills as she developed ever increasing skills in the online world. She helped to pioneer the first (that we know of) completely virtual fan-bootlegged music album that paid revenues to the artist (Matthew Ebel’s Virtual Hot Wings), used leverage and knowledge to take on more complex projects for people who originally started looking for someone to manage their calendar, and eventually became a seasoned, knowledgeable virtual project manager. (not to mention competent SEO professional and WordPress deployment specialist)

Then we threw her under the bus, so to speak, except that the bus was made entirely of a metal called chaos, weighed a gigaton, and bore the license plate PodCamp Boston 4, by making her lead organizer. What nearly 400 people experienced on August 8-9 of this year is the result of Chel continually refusing to limit herself to what her doubts and fears want her to be. Nearly 400 people had a phenomenal, educational time at PodCamp Boston 4, and hopefully took a first big swing at their own chains of doubt and fear.

It’s my sincere hope that you take away something similar from PodCamp. Folks at the closing heard about how PodCamp got started, about how Chris Brogan and I basically winged it with our first team 4 PodCamps ago, refusing to accept the limitation that new media conferences could only be thrown by professionals. I say this to encourage you to look at what you believe your limits are and take another swing at them on the anvil. I say this so that when I see you again in a year for the next PodCamp Boston that you are soaring higher than ever, your chains of doubt left far behind.

May you achieve your potential.

May you awaken your superhero.

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August 10, 2009
Office breakfast in 2 minutes

Want to save money and still eat well? Try this stupidly simple office breakfast that’s low carb, high protein, cheap as can be, and tasty. All the materials together will probably give you about 10 days’ worth of breakfast and cost only 2 days’ worth. You’ll need:

1. A pack of fajita wraps. I tend to use a medium size.
2. A packet of shredded cheese. Jalapeno jack if you like spicy, otherwise the shredded cheese of your choice.
3. A carton of eggs or a carton of Better than Eggs. Either is fine.
4. Pinch of salt and black pepper.
5. A microwave.
6. A fork.

Here’s how you do it. In a plastic, microwave safe dish (clean used takeout containers work fine), pour just enough scrambled egg mix (either beaten with a fork or from the carton, with or without salt and pepper) to cover the bottom. Pop it in the microwave for 60 seconds. It’ll inflate like a balloon, then deflate, which is funny to watch, but fine to eat.

On a separate microwave safe plate, put a fajita wrapper down and sprinkle some cheese on it, just enough to cover the middle. Microwave for 30 seconds or until the cheese melts, whichever comes first.

Scrape out the egg from the plastic container and put it on the cheese.

Roll it up, wait for it to cool down a bit, and eat.

It’s delicious, it’s convenient, it’s MUCH cheaper than anything you buy on a per serving basis, and it’s faster to boot than running downstairs/upstairs/across the street. Nutritionally, a high protein breakfast will deliver more consistent long term energy than a carb heavy breakfast, too.

Be sure to clean and reuse the dish and fork for extra savings.

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August 6, 2009
The Esoteric Secrets of Pomegranate, Kisses, and Social Media

There are two basic kinds of secrets – secrets of information and secrets of experience.

Secrets of information are data points. The ingredients in Coca Cola. The Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices. These secrets are valuable until the information becomes commonplace or available enough that competitors can use them to their advantage and your disadvantage. In classical religious studies these are exoteric secrets, or surface secrets.

Secrets of experience are something else entirely. The taste of a pomegranate. Your true love’s kiss. Getting your black belt. These secrets aren’t informational but experiential, which means that everyone can know the data points about the secret but still have no idea what it is or how it works. In classical religious studies these are esoteric secrets, or deep secrets.

Most of the really good stuff in life, most of the really powerful, life changing secrets are the latter, the experiential, the esoteric. There is no way, no matter how much you try, to describe to someone who’s never had one, with great accuracy the taste of a pomegranate such that when they put it in their mouth, the experience is not new. There is no way, no matter how graphic you get, that you can ever relate that first kiss to someone you love with any level of precision.

Esoteric experiences are just that – experiences. Master teachers – true master teachers – don’t teach you these secrets. They can’t. What they can do is create conditions favorable for you to teach yourself the secrets.

So what does this have to do with social media?

Take your pick of folks selling you social media secrets. This eBook, that blog, this book tour, that DVD, this limited opportunity, that guide. The sad news is, about 99% of it is bullshit. Complete, utter, and total bullshit perpetrated by people looking to make a fast buck on the inexperienced.

Social media is inherently about relationships between humans. Yes, there’s a decent amount of technology involved. Yes, it scales to levels that are beyond what humans can naturally maintain. Yes, a lot of those relationships are frighteningly superficial.

At the end of the day, though, because humans are at the core of social media, the power and value you get out of it, the power and value you deliver to it – all of it is rooted in experience. How to ask someone for help promoting your charity on Twitter. How to offer help to someone who sounds like they’re in sincere need in your Facebook stream. How to enjoy the serendipity of communicating the same things – life – in new ways to lots of new friends, and even a few new enemies. No book, no guide, no guru can teach you these things. You can only learn them through experience.

If you want to learn social media, to become proficient at it, to be a veteran practitioner, seek out experiences. Instead of talking about the shape, size, weight, and best vendors of pomegranate, rating whose reviews of pomegranate are best or whether a certain celebrity eats pomegranate, get off your ass and go eat one. Instead of spinning endless circles about the right or wrong way to use Twitter, Facebook, Ning, or every other social channel, go accomplish something with it. Find a charity that needs some promotional help. Join a local meetup group and practice using the tools to bring in new members.

Do. Accomplish. Kiss the girl/guy/etc., eat the pomegranate, and have the experience. At the end of the day, while others are talking about their social media expertise, which sounds stirringly reminiscent of prepubescent boys in a locker room bragging about exploits they’ve never had, you’ll have the experience, the real deal, and the satisfaction of knowing the esoteric secrets of social media.

No surprise, the photo is of a pomegranate.

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August 4, 2009
Charles Jo gets it

I sent out a request for a recommendation/referral to my LinkedIn contacts this morning for a senior web app dev for Edvisors, knowing full well that there are some recruiters in the list, even though we explicitly state in the job ad that we don’t use recruiters or agencies. More than a few folks sent back pointless commercial pitches or argued about the necessity of their trade, but one guy stood out as someone doing it the right way.

Charles Jo wrote:

Christopher,

Thanks for sending. I forwarded to my network and requested that they contact you directly.

Please do keep me in mind as you start expanding your recruiting/sourcing efforts and when you start using consultants as well.

Best,

Charles

Charles gets it. He put in some upfront effort with no expectation of commercial gain, and for that, if I do need to retain a recruiter or agency in the future, guess whose card I’m going to pull first? Charles.

None of what we do in social media is all that complicated. None of it requires a degree in rocket science. Some of it is just this simple.

You can see what else Charles has available at his Scribd list. Thanks, Charles, for doing it right.

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August 3, 2009
Marketing to stereotype or reality?

Here’s an interesting question. In marketing, especially mass, B2C marketing, we make a lot of assumptions based on “studies”. I’ll give you an example from the student loan world. When marketing student loans, a number of studies say that if you are going after the Hispanic market, you should use photographs and language that shows multiple generations of the family, as opposed to just parent/student or student by themselves. Some of this dates back to a 2005 study by Sallie Mae on decision factors for Hispanic students in borrowing for college which said that Hispanic students tend to make financial decisions in favor of borrowing with the advice and guidance of parents and grandparents.

The question is, is that accurate? Is using any kind of ethnosocial marketing effective, and if so, how do you determine which studies are reliable?

Do you risk giving offense to a targeted demographic if you’re marketing to a stereotype that came out of a study that might have been less than scientifically valid?

If you do any kind of demographic targeted marketing, I’d love to hear how you handle these kinds of things.

Full disclosure: I work for the Student Loan Network, a student loan company, and anything I say should be assumed to be biased towards my company because we’re awesome.

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August 3, 2009
I'll see you at PodCamp Boston 4

No surprise, I’m going to PodCamp Boston 4. How could I not?

I’ll be leading three discussions at PodCamp Boston 4, and I encourage you to drop in and say hi.

1. What’s now for what’s next?

What are the things we should be doing now to prepare for what’s next?

2. Marketing Makeover

Let’s get a few people to bravely volunteer their marketing programs and web sites, and we’ll all critique – constructively – together, from SEO to social media to old school. Think of it like Extreme Makeover, only about your marketing and no comments about your physical fitness or hair style.

3. Marketing Over Coffee Live

Marketing Over Coffee, the marketing podcast I do with John Wall, will be doing another live session this year, with special guests Chris Brogan and CC Chapman. Casual, fun, and actionable are the themes we’re going for. Come participate!

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July 30, 2009

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