What happens when a leader questions himself?

Mitch Joel, who I have written about in this space before, is a social media thought leader. I didn’t say expert because I think the term “social media expert” has been watered down by schmoes trying to cash in with little in their credibility bank.

Mitch has loads of credibility because of his knowledge and passion for the subject of social media. So it was with some surprise that I and his other subscribers read one of his recent posts entitled “Five Reasons Why This Blog is a Failure“.

If you write a blog, this question is worthy of your consideration. In this case, someone who knows more about blogging and social media than you or me is asking this question of himself.

I hope you’ll read the wholepost but to summarizes, Mitch seems a bit obsessed with the Ad Age Power 150 which is a daily ranking of marketing blogs. Mitch is ranked #22 while his friend Chris Brogan is ranked #1. So Mitch asked his other friend Julien Smith (who has co-authored a book with Chris Brogan) about why Mitch’s blog isn’t as popular as Chris’ blog.

My point to Mitch in my comment (yes, I am one of those people that actually supports blogs by leaving comments…few people do that any more) was that we men have a problem worrying about size and who is bigger in many aspects of our lives and the answer matters very little to blogs.

To me, it’s not how many people read your blog but rather are the right people reading your blog.

Who is your audience? What do they need to know? How can you help them with your content? What do you want to accomplish by publishing your blog?

There is no Ad Age Power Ranking for Voice Over blogs so I’ll defer to our friend Google and the search term “voice over blog”. I’m ranked like 7th in a very small, niche category. Does that mean there are 6 more popular blogs than mine or does that mean I am a top 10 blogger? Is your glass half full or half empty?

For me, I write about what I am passionate about (voiceover, marketing and advertising) and most times I try and put forth stuff that will help or entertain readers.

Sometimes, selfishly, I write just to please myself.

But in either case I stay true to what I know (very well) about and what content pleases me. Hopefully that content will please my readers (I am grateful to have even the one subscriber – who may or may not be a family member, I dunno).

If it was just about the readers, this would be a newspaper and I’d sell ads. But it’s not and I don’t.

Still, I like Julien’s ideas and know that this blog (and probably yours) is a work in progress. How would you improve this blog? What changes would you suggest I make? What changes should you make in your blog?

All while staying true our (yours and mine) original focus.

Tags: advertising, blogs, commentary, marketing, social media, social networking, technology, voiceover, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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To me, this is a game changer.

As reported by Tech Crunch: “A hardware/software combination for mobile devices (launching first for the iPhone/iPod touch) that allows vendors to easily accept and process credit card payments” via a product called Square that was developed by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey.

For my business, for any business, this application has enormous potential. Watch.

Tags: commentary, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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The Apple i-Pad

Nobody has yet said that about the i-Pad as far as I know…well, because it’s not true.

But what they (and I’ll define who “they” is in just a moment) have said is: “the i-Pad changes everything!”

Well, that’s not true either, but reality, practicality and obsessive fandom don’t play well together.

I say: congrats to Apple on creating another good and useful product. To me, that seems like a positive review. But Merriam-Webster called me early today to advise that i-Pad reviewers and users have used up all of their dictionary’s superlatives. “Magical”, “Revolutionary”?

The i-Pad is a communication tool, and an expensive one. It has the potential to change portable computing and mobile communication from the way it exists now. New devices are supposed to do that…it’s why we buy them.

But from even the smarter analysts of social media and technology, down to social media experts (aren’t we all) and even the lowly end “users” (I never thought I’d miss the moniker “consumer”)– their unanimous, overboard passion for the i-Pad (pro or con) is asinine.

The i-Phone is a good mobile device (disclosure: I bought one) with many features and some short comings….it didn’t and doesn’t change everything (oy, did “they” go nuts over that device). Neither does the i-Pad.

Whether it’s a desire for a snappy headline or just a bunch of zombie-like devotees – the write-ups and even broadcasts about this stuff seems neurotic. It goes beyond marketing.

I recognize the whole weird Apple addiction/superiority thing but people are getting a bit stupid about this stuff.

The development of electricity, the telephone, the light bulb, the airplane…these things each changed everything. Literally, figuratively and absolutely. Even if you’d like to make a case in this category for the first computer or the first portable computer – I will certainly welcome your opinion about how these items “changed everything”.

But so far there has been no i-Anything that has “changed everything”.

Short attention spans and instant gratification seekers lack perspective yet they live in a world of absolutes (“best” this or “worst” that). I’m guilty of it sometimes and I bet you are too.

But it seems we can be shaken from “absolutes” coma and gain some perspective eventually. I hope these Apple and i-Pad fanatics will get some soon too.

Is it just me noticing this or are you seeing it too? Am I wrong?

Tags: advertising, branding, commentary, commercials, marketing, social media, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Yes, I had a blog before my web designers had a blog.

They helped me design it, upload it and maintain it. They thought it was really swell.

And then they sat for about a hundred years on the blogosphere sidelines. Oy! Well, they were busy doing a ton of highly successful web projects for big name companies in the meantime, so I kinda understand the delay.

But only kinda. 😉

You can lead web geeks to water but you cannot make them drink the blog kool-aid…initially. But now that they have tasted it, they may become addicted and we will all be better for it.

Craig Chapman and his team at Rare Earth Interactive have created their own blog and it will be tremendous. There are oodles of factoids on web design, search engine optimization, content, flash and loads of other helpful stuff that they will likely offer on their blog. It will be good stuff.

They’ve been a great partner for me and I hope you’ll take time to enjoy their ride as well.

Tags: blogs, commentary, social media, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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When it comes to technology, I am not an early adopter like, say Dave Courvoisier. This is especially true for me with internet technology.

I was late to Firefox as a browser and I only kind of embrace things like Gotomeeting.com as just two examples.

As a business owner though, I know that I need to at least have a passing understanding of the purpose of some this technology because many of my voice over clients have it or will begin using it.

While we all don’t need to necessarily be internet technology experts in the eyes of our clients, we shouldn’t appear technologically inferior either.

So you may have seen on the web talk of something called Google Wave, you may have even gotten an invitation to participate in it (yeah, it’s currently an “invite” thing but its not that crazy exclusive).

I don’t understand Google Wave very much…maybe because I haven’t used it. But because it’s Google it has a better than average chance of being universally adopted by people I work with. So I need to try and understand it…and you should probably try to learn about it to.

So far, the best explanation of Google Wave that I have found so far was written by Gina Trapani over at Life Hacker. It’s a kind of an FAQ that helped me understand the business applications of Google Wave a bit more and I hope it will help you too.

Look, if it was easy, anybody could do it. Open your brain a bit and let some stuff in this post seep in. It may help.

Tags: commentary, internet, technology, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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The reason I ask this question is that I just enjoyed a nice three day weekend, pretty much away from the computer. This AM, opening up my Google reader, I see over 900 blog posts and over fifty of them are in the voiceover category.

What is it we think we all have to say? And I include me in there too.

It’s a vicious circle, mind you. You should have a blog to be an active participant in social media (and SEO/SEM) and everybody has the right to share whatever they like. Equally true, we can all subscribe and unsubscribe to any blog at any time (except this blog, you can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave).

With all this content, what are we all contributing to? And how many people are not just reading (Feedburner +) but understanding? Are we communicating or are we just spewing? Because more important to social media than the tool (a blog) is the content…saying something of relevance.

A blog writer has to assume that their posts resonate with someone if they have even one subscriber (and by the way, not for nothing, I mean it when I say thank you for subscribing). But when I think about 900 posts over three days multiplied times content on radio, television, newspaper, Facebook et al multiplied times international content….my head literally spins a bit.

Today I will hit “mark all as read” on my Google Reader very often and likely erase some quality content that I cannot make room for. I must move on.

Am I simply oversubscribed or overwhelmed? Have these thoughts ever occurred to you? How do you deal with all this communication, all this noise? Do you tune in more or totally tune out? Any tricks you care to share?

Tags: blogs, commentary, facebook, google, internet, newspapers, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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