Macrocephalous Autohagiographers are people who shamelessly self promote in an effort to make their voice heard. The term Macrocephalous Autohagiographer was derived from “Macrocephalous” which means an abnormal largeness of the head and  Autohagiographer which is term for referring to oneself in a congratulatory nature. Look, I’ve constantly heard about how women are underrepsented in the tech industry, so I’ve decided to do something about it. A couple of friends and myself have started a blog to highlight great female tech leaders and explore how they got to where they are, troubles they faced, and advice they can grant.

Along the way we’ll be highlighting amazing female bloggers and hopefully plan to create a mentoring system. It’s going to be amazing!

So if you’re a Macrocephalous Autohagiographer, Join US!

Greetings from the North Pole…

It’s not very often that you get a request from Santa Claus. However, Santa’s Hide-A-Way Hollow needs your help. Toyota Motor Company has established “100 Cars for Good.” Through their efforts,they are awarding 1 new car each day to charities for 100 days. Everyday 5 new charities are listed on their facebook page. Santa’s Hide-A-Way Hollow is one of those selected charities.

On July 11th, Santa’s Hide-A-Way becomes eligible to receive a new Toyota pickup truck. Please visit the page below and vote.(You do need a Facebook account in order to vote). Please pass this on to all your friends, co-workers, and family members. A new pickup truck would be extremely useful to Santa. Lights and sirens would be added just like the old truck, which is 11 yrs old and rusting. The truck would be used to protect the children, transport our elves and the children. In the event we have to rush a child back to the hospital, the truck would help _transport the child to safety. Please remember to vote and please help us by passing this e-mail on.

If you don’t know what Santa’s Hideaway is, it is a charity that gives terminally and critically ill children a chance to experience their last Christmas, any time of the year. It is a chance to escape the pain, medication, and sadness, while giving the lasting memory of Santa Claus, his elves, reindeer, and toys. Over the last 30 years we have visited 73,000 children at hospitals, hospice, their own homes, and brought them to Santa’s Hide-A-Way Hollow.

Thank you and Merry Christmas,
Santa Claus

Creativity by definition refers to when a person creates something new (a product, a solution, a work of art etc.) which has some kind of value.  Value of course in entirely subjective and definitely can be see by the vast differences between the world’s prized artists.  However it seems in the world’s more “traditional” careers creativity is more obvious and lucrative. Unlike the painter who’s creativity can takes years and years for mainstream society to recognize ( and is often post mortem), creativity in the corporate environment often has short term benefits. If you come up with a brilliant idea, the business has the funds to act on it, and if it bodes well  you’re likely to walk home with a nice paycheck. The reason for the great return on creative endeavors is simple, it’s simply not a  common or cultured skill outside of artistic communities.

One could say that creativity is dead in modern corporate culture and is hence why smaller more “creative” start-ups are effectively competing with more established brands. Perhaps corporations have forgotten the importance of creativity and the need for it to be a requirement of the job- not a rare  talent. But how can companies make the shift from a creativity free work place, to think tank for new and creative ideas? And how does this shift happen with out abandoning the structure and process that keep these organizations efficient and productive?

Whenever I attend a conference or event on social media there seems to be a frequent occurrence. Someone in the room gets excited, begins to sweat a little, wipes their forehead, and then begins to babble on about much each additional fan or follower is worth. Apparently : SO MUCH MONEY. You know the deal, this aphinony is followed by a loosley constructed PowerPoint deck that mathematically distills the magical chunk change that each new follower creates. And ooooo eeeee it’s so big! You’d be a fool not to go out and spend 100k on generic- key word here being generic- facebook “friend me” ads.

While I understand a bevy of fans can be a powerful route of corporate communication ( much like an email list), but standard economics tells us there is a point where the return is less than the expense of execution. Furthermore, I struggle to see how one can effectively place a dollar value on a single a fan or follower. It’s not that fans aren’t important, it’s just that social media drive to purchase of a single fan is incredibly hard to measure and to arrive at any number forces analysts to make a series of broad generalizations. These generalizations can cause several major problems:

1. Generalizations hide important subgroups: The problem with generalizations is that they mask fanatics and laggards. So you attribute X additional revenue dollars to a facebook campaign with Y number of fans. Your fanatic population may make up for 70% of that increased revenue attributed to Facebook- it does not makes sense to evenly distribute the attribution to the overall fan base.
2. New Fans may not be as valuable as old fans: Those users who first friend a brand page on Facebook or follow a brand Twitter account are often advocates and potentially higher purchasers. The later waves of fans often are driven to fan based on advertising, promotional activities, or etc. While it’s likely some of the new followers may also be fans of a brand, it’s not guaranteed that their purchase rate is the same as old fans. In some cases, the opposite may even be true, that news fans actually generate higher revenue than old.
3. It’s difficult to attribute all Social Media revenue: Not all revenue earned by Facebook can be back-tracked to the social media site. A user may see a promotion or product on the Facebook page, and go out of the world that is Facebook and hand type the website address to purchase. This user would appear as a standard web purchaser, rather than a social media driven purchaser. Thus, the revenue attributed to the site will always be greater than measured.
4. Traditional media suffers from the same problems: If you run a TV ad it is difficult to say, this ad alone made me X revenue. There are always external indicators that can drive up revenue and create metric bias.

While ROI metrics will always be an important of an business initiative, I do not yet to see the value of attaching a dollar amount to a single fan. In fact as I write about this I am further resolved in my thinking that companies should look at social media not solely as a revenue driven dollar sign, but as a brand building and cost- saving initiative. I also realize as much as I want it to be, data will never be perfect. Le sigh. Such are the Sunday troubles of one Anna OBrien, social media geek and general statistics addict.

It seems like over the past 3 years every 3 months I read an article or posting about why you should watch out for social media experts. There was this one from Bloomberg, a few from the Olivier Blanchard ( of the brand builder),  and most recently this one from Peter Shankman. I get it, there are a lot of idiots out there working  under the guise of of social media expert (or ninja, savant, master, ringleader, el toro,  or etc etc)  that have no marketing experience.  Worse yet, companies ( especially small businesses) fall for these people’s ploys repeatedly. It sucks. Guess what’s not going to fix it? Blogging about how much it sucks… again .. and again… and again.

I don’t blame the first few who wrote about it ( or even those who have written more recently). It’s super frustrating when you work yourself to the bone to deliver great work and some idiot is selling shit in a bag for the same price.  It’s also annoying to know that the perception of your work gets devalued every time that idiot opens his mouth. I have had the same angry, yell bad words, bury face in pillow, look at guns online, reconsider life path, and sob moments I assume many of these writers have had.   However, I’ve come to the conclusion that false marketing prophets exist in every channel- not just social media.

There are people who claim to experts at webdesign and make websites with interfaces that are counter intuitive and ugly. There are print advertisers that make inserts that are flat, stale and bland. It’s not a social media problem, it’s a general work  problem. We all can remember the free loader in high school or college who got an excellent grade by using, mooching and conniving ( hopefully you weren’t one of them). At a more macro level, entire political strategies are built around trying to outwit the lackey, but none of it has effectively eliminated the problem. It’s a life problem that’s not going to go away; granted,  it might be reduced as general practitioner knowledge grows.

If we really want prevent people from being bamboozled by idiots hidden in the sparkly shroud of social media know-it-all camouflage, we’ve got to start make spotting good work obvious. It stinks that true practitioners and marketers at heart have to drive the change in perception, but that’s how it always has been.  It’s not blogs or writing alone that will drive change, it’s elbow grease and hard work. It’s more than just creating great work, it’s sharing knowledge, ideas and driving intelligent dialogue.  Eventually the wheat gets separated from the chaff (for the most part), it just takes time and patience.

When I was a kid my father always told me that working hard was more important than talking hard. So I say this will all my heart to all of you who I love and deeply respect for the intelligent marketers you are,  shut up and get back to work- we’ve got a whole lot of idiots to disprove.

Friendster (2002)

Well I am very good at falling, I do it often on campus and at home. One time a went on a date with real tall dude and we went longboarding and I totally biffed it. That’s kind of my thing, falling. I fully exploit 50 cent tuesdays at the the dollar theater. I know how to max the ticket output at the nicklecade. Oh yeah my cast glows in the dark.

What I enjoy doing:Designing clothes for extreme tacky Barbie make overs, longboarding, Kareoke night at Jerry’s, talking like Bill, falling down, exploiting the world through a wheelchair, thursday night dance parties, cookie night

Myspace (2004)

I hail from Cleveland, but some how got turned around and ended up in the middle of quirky P-town. I consider myself better than you and your mom. I love to just sit down and jam. I have yet to make it famous and I figure that’s not exactly where it’s at. All my songs are just random creations and variations on the same theme… life. While I might sometimes be sappy, I figure its only the result of overexposure to Utah waves. The way I look at it, all the world’s a zoo, but are you going to allow yourself to be locked up in a cage and stared at all day? I vote for watching everyone else making fools of themselves while enjoying cotton candy

Xanga (2006)

Interests: Shaky eggs, rocking out to “you’re no Irish Laddie”, flaunting my moderately attractiveness, writing,playing, and listening to music, putting peeps in the microwave so I can see them fight,
Expertise: Putting my hands in the air and waving them like I just don’t care

Facebook (2009)

Random facts about me: In college I financed a trip to Disneyland by asking strangers if I could borrow a quarter. I never graduated high school; my family makes fun of me for being the only student at Columbia Graduate school with a GED. I once set my house on fire with my underwear.  I like to write dumb songs on the spot with roommates/ friends. When I was younger I competed in math competitions and surprisingly I won a lot. But really I only did it for the school day off and free pizza.

Twitter (2011)

Anna the analyst… my name predicted my career. Go figure. Something-something at somewhere awesome.

Dear Anna,

I work for a social media company.  I will claim I met you at some event you registered for, and never attended. I will them blab about how awesome my company is- how it solves world hunger, cures aids, and makes you fart rainbows and smiles faces. I will try to help you understand social media, because obviously you- working for a large brand- knows nothing about it. Because I am so awesome and social media savvy I will educate you for the next four paragraphs with random jargon and cheesy terms like “sexy”, “mega” and “epic”. I will assume you have no social media strategy, no brain, and that you think my email is God’s answer to your many nights of praying & begging for social media intelligence. Not once will I mention how it will work specifically for your business, because obviously whatever I am selling will fulfill every need you have. It’s just so awesome! I will then end this email by splattering random famous social media names and sites, using the words “influence”, “ROI” Or “true measure” no less than 4 times and reiterate how effing awesome I am (exclamation points!!!!!).

New-age email closing phrase,

Company who would like to pitch you.

Really? You think that’s going to make interested in your company, let alone me take the time to respond to you? Hell no! If anything it’s forced me to permanently tattoo your name in the “do not do business with” file folder in my brain. In some cases, the emails I have been so bad I’ve even encouraged others to avoid doing business with them. I’ve seen all kinds of email hot messes. My personal favorite? One company had the nerve to do a mass email to several brands and forgot to BCC the recipients! Fail. Let me tell you how to actually get me to respond.

1.  Don’t lead with your business, lead with you: What your company does is important. Let me tell you what’s more important- that I like you. I have to know then when I call you at 5 pm on Friday with a massive issue that a) you can help b) you won’t be jerkwad supreme about it. And how do I find out if we get along? Meeting you. So, your goal of any first email shouldn’t be going in for the kill, but rather a casual invitation to -what I like to call- a vendor first date. Something away from the office that’s casual, not too private, and I don’t have to slip out the window to get away if it tanks.  Great examples are conference invites, drinks, industry events, etc.  (Note: this list does not include a “webinar”)

2. Do you research: When you write your email, do not send me a form email. YOU WILL NOT GET A RESPONSE. Do you see how I used the caps-lock there? It’s because sh*t’s getting serious here. Form letters are lazy and shows that you weren’t willing to do enough research to write an email that would actually resonate. Furthermore, Social Media is the complete antithesis of a form email. So if you’re trying to sell me on the fact you get social with a form email; I can assume you don’t and move the hell on. See how that works? Is it so effing hard to Google my name and title and learn a little bit about me? It’s not like there’s a shortage of data out there folks.  And if you did your research and found I was tweeting/ blogging about a problem you can solve- that’s a great way to get my attention.

3. Show don’t tell: When you talk about your business, do not tell me I am going to love it. Guess what? That’s my decision. Instead use whatever space you have to talk about your business, to talk about key differentiators. Other companies likely have similar capabilities, but I want you kn0w what makes you shiny and new. Proof is in the pudding; so don’t talk to me if you aren’t going to give me a proper demo. And by demo I do not mean a power point with a couple screen shots of your tool/ software, I mean a real life play space I can mess around with and form an educated opinion about your product. If I can’t test drive the car, I am not buying.

After writing this I can only hope that, maybe just maybe, someone will find this post and actually write me an email that I’ll want to respond to.

But the more I watch the reality TV the more I begin to see the true “reality” in it. Yes, people are staged or coached into doing certain things. Yes, money seems to not be a barrier for doing anything [unless it's built into some type of crazy plot twist]. Yes, the whole world- from the wardrobe to the circumstances- are fabricated. However, even with all of these “fake” influences, there are still very real components. Take for example The Jersey Shore. Here 7 people who have virtually no income, who still live at home at the age of 25, with extreme tanning, fist pumping, & hair poofing tendencies live in one house together. Even though the cast is carefully selected to have a bitch, a tough girl, a victim, and crazy one…. that’s not what I see. Instead I focus on the endearing quality that the cast finds ways to have fun even in the worst of situation. Perhaps the true magic of the cast is not that are a perfectly orchestrated public catastrophe [which they are], but rather that even with everything working against them they still maintain their celebration attitude. And why do they do that, because at the end of the day that’s who they are! It’s something that simply can’t be hidden by all the commotion.

How does this apply to social media? Well in many ways interactions between digital users are heavily orchestrated. There are character limits that control length. Internal emotions cause us to perhaps present ourselves slightly differently then we would in person. There are less barriers to interaction. Much like alcohol and endless money act as catalysts for our Guido loving ladies, social sites remove barriers and act as the catalyst to our interactions with each other, albeit digitally. Even with all of this pushing us to interact, connect, & some might even say “live” in what in our fabricated world, we still who we are- no matter how much that might be masked by the circumstances and opportunities our online lives present us.

Recently I chatted with my co-worker about his career. I’ll admit, I was driving him to explore social media more. His response? “For something to work there needs to be BOTH soldiers and generals. Generals know the strategy and the space, soldiers push forward on those orders overcoming obstacles with out looking back to question. Anna, I’m right now I’m a soldier.” This analogy forced me to stop and think. Not everybody needs to be a “thought leader” to make a difference. Plus,  if we were all thought leaders nothing would ever get done. Ever. Social media takes up too much time.

And, if your entire work force is spending their work day tweeting, facebooking and etc (even if it is about work stuff), where would they have time to do their job? Who would be the faithful soldier fighting the good fight for progress? They’d be too busy debating the ins and out of social media within their industry & strategizing to actually create  the necessary inroads into the businesses, services, and the other areas social media will inevitably continue support.  And the bonds soldiers, such as my coworker, are building are critical. Without those inroads  social media could become a stand alone item, rather than an integrated portion of how we look at the communications landscape.

So lets hear it for the soldiers of social media. Sure they may not have a bajillion followers on twitter. They may not roll out with Chris Brogan & B. Solis on the weekend eating bacon and washing it down with champagne. And- shock- they may not even have a personal Facebook page. But at the end of the day, they fight the good fight, push things forward, and get way less credit then they deserve.  They may not be social media gurus, but the understand its importance enough to fight wholeheartedly for it and never look back.  That, frankly,  is a dedication to progress that is too rarely rewarded in our industry.