It Ain’t What You Say, It’s the Way That You Say It

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It Ain’t What You Say, It’s the Way That You Say It

If there is one argument I love to have, it’s debating the concept of professional language. Too often, it describes flawed attempts to emulate an academic thesis or a Victorian bank manager. You know the sort of stuff – a white paper, official email or corporate website where the language is so dense, formal and archaic that your brain melts from the sheer dullness of it all.

How can that be considered professional? If your readers have to go over a sentence twice to glean the correct meaning, then your writing has failed. If your readers decide it’s too much effort to push beyond the opening paragraphs – never mind make it to the end – then your writing has failed. If your readers draw the wrong conclusions about your message, your brand or your product, then your writing has failed.

Show a Little Decorum

Professional language is that which conveys the right message to the right audience in the most appropriate and persuasive manner.

Classicists, rhetoricians and speechwriters have a word for this: Decorum. These days, the word “decorum” is more often used to mean general politeness in various social settings; but its rhetorical definition is more specific – adapting one’s language and behaviour to suit the specific audience.

We all use decorum to a degree. Some of us have an almost chameleon-like skill to fit in with any group, whether a maiden aunt’s tea party or a bawdy group of lads down the pub. But businesses and marketers often struggle with this. Language and content are more often adapted to appeal to the Board, instead of the individual customer.

Yet, when used well, decorum can turn even the most casual use of language into a professional win. This Twitter conversation from 2014, between UK retailer Argos and a disgruntled customer, remains one of my favourite examples.

Tweet to @Argos Online that says, YO wen u gettin da ps4 tings in moss side?
Tweeted reply from @ArgosHelpers that says, Safe badman, we gettin sum more PS4 tings in wivin da next week y'get me.

This Argos example illustrates perfectly that decorum is possible within a professional business context. Sure, the information contained in the reply wouldn’t have changed if the community manager had used formal language, but the message may have been received very differently by the customer—particularly as he already felt disrespected by a member of staff. The difference in tone and language would have been a wall between the brand and the customer that could have hampered attempts to resolve the situation.

Decorum works by appealing to our natural instinct to trust those most like ourselves or, at least, those who can demonstrate that they genuinely understand who we are. Differences in how we communicate can imply other differences, such as background, experience, education and attitude. We automatically assess these factors alongside the information contained in those words when deciding how much weight and trust to give the message.

Yes, authenticity is still important. The Argos tweet would never have worked if the community manager got any of the lingo even slightly wrong. Attempting to ape a style and missing can potentially be worse than sticking with your natural tone of voice.

While the slang dialect used by Argos may seem like a different language to many other customers watching the exchange, they were not the intended audience. This was a direct response to a particular customer in his dialect. The side effect was that the wider audience could see that, instead of expecting the customer to conform to the brand, the brand conformed to the customer—a very powerful statement.

Alternatively, much of the academic terminology, corporate jargon and buzzwords in so-called professional writing can be just as impenetrable or meaningless to the average person, but without the justification that the intended reader actually speaks that way.

Leveraging the Linguistic Learnings

I think a threw up a little in my mouth writing that subheading, but it illustrates just how inhuman so-called “professional language” has become. Anyway, the irony amuses me.

In my time, I’ve written a lot of corporate copy. On more than one occasion a client has edited or provided feedback on my copy that effectively peppers it with vague buzzwords, tortures the grammar and deletes anything approaching a human tone of voice. When I challenge this sort of feedback, the reasoning is always, “We think our version is more professional”. That’s usually the red flag that tells me it’s time to find a new client. Another red flag is, “I love it, but you need to make these changes before the CEO/Board/other stakeholders will approve it.” If it’s a choice between educating the boss or undermining the content, guess which side I’m on.

If I were cynical old bugger (don’t say it) I’d think the intention was to smudge over anything approaching clarity or emotion until it becomes a homogenised, generic slurry of corporate cliches. But that can’t really be the intention. No company would actively set out to make their content less clear, less competitive and less targeted to the customer. Would they?

This corporate tone of voice fascinates me because it definitely isn’t human. It is a highly conservative and reduced form of English that has evolved out of continual imitation and repetition within corporate circles. In this sense, professional language is about conformity and a fear of not fitting in with those deemed to already represent a successful corporate ideal. They don’t want to appear different to their competitors because being different can feel awfully like being wrong. And that reveals a lack of confidence.

So much for competitive advantage and brand differentiation.

The result is a generic kit of safe, inoffensive and important-sounding words and phrases that can be bolted together in almost any order to produce copy that conforms to this corporate norm, without necessarily saying anything of real substance. It is possible to write paragraph after paragraph about how the “enterprise-grade, mission critical solution” can “empower business goals” and “leverage strategic opportunities” that are “aligned with internal priorities” without once specifically describing how the product works!

Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Corporate language is also about obfuscation or misdirection. Too often it is used to mask the uncomfortable truth that even the company isn’t sure what the product really does (I’ve certainly received briefs like this). On other occasions, it may be misguided, entitled bluster that hopes to assume authority without having earned it. “They seem like professionals, so the product must be good—whatever it is. We must obey our corporate overlords.”

Do You Speak My Language?

We’re constantly surrounded by these same empty phrases and buzzwords, so they can be the first to pop into your head when speaking or writing. It’s easier for the brain to pick a vague term that is at the top of your mental lexicon due to common usage than to dig deep for an original or more accurate phrase. In that way, buzzwords and cliches can infect everyone.

Professional content and copywriters have to remain vigilant, eliminating empty words and phrases from our content while resisting unhelpful feedback. We must always write for the target readership, not the board or CEO. We must banish the predictable and embrace the thesaurus. Above all, we must always get our message across.

That’s how to use language like a professional.

Quote/Unquote: Three Reasons to Check Your Sources

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Quote/Unquote: Three Reasons to Check Your Sources

The internet loves quotations. Social media definitely loves quotations. These days, it seems all you have to do to achieve viral gold is slap an inspirational quote onto a sunset and spam it to every network. But while the right quote, correctly attributed, can lend authority and gravitas to your content, an inaccurate or dodgy quote can just as easily undermine it.

It should come as no surprise that I read a lot. Every morning, I read non-fiction for one hour to try to erode the massive pile of books in my study. In the evenings, I try to fit in another hour of fiction. I’ve also developed the habit of quickly noting down or capturing to Evernote any interesting ideas, facts or quote-worthy lines I might want to use later.

Because I’m a stickler for footnotes and correct referencing, I also note the author, book title, page number, publisher and year. This might seem a bit obsessive and it certainly slows down my reading, but I’ve learned the hard way to capture the good stuff when I find it. I’ve lost too many afternoons trying to remember where I read a particular fact or knockout line to include in an article (and too often failing).

Sadly, I feel I’m in the minority. Sites such as Brainyquote, Quoteland and Wikiquote make it so easy to find quotes on just about any topic. But the sourcing is usually terrible, relying on guesswork, assumption or faulty conventional wisdom. If anything, such websites are part of the problem as – just like the misinformation minefield of Wikipedia – they allow anyone to submit unverified quotations that others then assume have the stamp of accuracy. I can only assume most of these people didn’t have university lecturers hammering into them the need to check their sources, referencing in sufficient detail, for their work to be taken seriously.

Years of researching articles, as well as seeking out and verifying quotations, have revealed to me just how shockingly inaccurate and potentially damaging some can be.

If one of the examples below were to find its way into your content or social media feed, your readers would have good reason to question your fact-checking abilities.

Quotation Mistake 1: The Wrong Words

The level of inaccuracy can sometimes be spectacular, but dodgy quotations aren’t necessarily deliberate. Most probably arise out of sloppy editing, poor comprehension, misplaced trust in an inaccurate source, or even something akin to the game Broken Telephone, where inaccuracy gradually builds upon inaccuracy as the quotation is passed from one person to another. A great example of the latter is discussed in a 2011 article from The Atlantic, which investigates how a Facebook user’s own words ended up being attributed to Martin Luther King – “mangled to meme in less than two days.”

What surprised me about The Atlantic article was the number of people who defended the quote as legitimate, even after learning of the mistake. Apparently, many people don’t understand the point of a quotation.

To them, and possibly many social media users, the message is the thing. We most commonly share quotations because they represent and support our view of the world. Because we agree with the sentiment, it feels “right”. And because it feels right, we’re less likely to question or check its accuracy or authenticity.

However, it doesn’t matter whether the sentiment is worthy or whether the line is representative of the person’s ideas. If the person didn’t say or write it, it isn’t a quote. Period.

Quotation Mistake 2: The Wrong Attribution

A quotation by a famous figure bestows far greater authority on a message than if we expressed the same idea in our own words. This is why a bad quotation is not always trivial: It lends authority where none may exist; it suggests endorsement where there may be none; and it can even distort or misrepresent the genuine beliefs, ideas and important works of great men and women. Here’s a case in point:

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.
 

Albert Einstein (not)

Of course it’s anything but physics. (What does this claptrap even mean, anyway?)

Meme version of an Einstein quotation he definitely never said

The quotation seems to have originated sometime between 1996 and 2000 – a long time after Einstein’s death then – apparently written by a chap called Darryl Anka on his website promoting his views on trance channelling and his ability to communicate with an extra-terrestrial entity called Bashar. I couldn’t make it up. If you don’t believe me, check out the full story at QuoteInvestigator.com.

Quotations are so often misattributed to Einstein that every time I see or hear a new one, I consider it fake until proven otherwise. For example, I attended a recent event where a speaker attributed Einstein with the following:

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.
 

Albert Einstein (?)

It’s a great message, and one I immediately wanted to use when talking about storytelling. But even before the speaker had moved on to the next slide, a quick Google on my smartphone cast doubt upon it.

While there’s no evidence Einstein didn’t say it, the evidence that he did is highly anecdotal, from a single source (since retold many times) and only supports the sentiment, not the specific quote.

Sometimes, however, a quote is more likely to be true than not. It’s just that the proof isn’t a hundred per cent reliable.

One example is the infamous Hemingway line, “The first draft of anything is shit”. I wanted to use this in a recent presentation on content writing; but while it was clearly attributed to Hemingway in a myriad of otherwise-trustworthy journals, books and articles, I could find no mention of when and where he said it.

Quote Investigator again provides more detail, revealing the line first appeared in a posthumous biography of the great writer. Yet, the time between when Hemingway supposedly said it to the biographer (1934) and the publication of the book (1984) – as well as the various hands involved in the manuscript – means there are still question marks about its accuracy.

So, I qualified the quotation by adding the word “apocryphal” in brackets after the attribution: while the quotation is commonly held to be true, it isn’t absolutely certain.

As there is even less evidence to support the Einstein quote on fairy tales, I have so far left it alone.

Quotation Mistake 3: The Wrong Context

Sometimes, a popular quotation can be both accurate and wrong, at the same time! The words might be correct – the attribution might be too – but when separated from the original text and placed in a different context the original meaning can become distorted.

A few weeks ago, I read The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (long overdue). In Chapter IX, I came across a familiar line often attributed to Machiavelli.

He who builds on the people, builds on the mud.
 

Machiavelli, as quoted

Here is the quote at Goodreads, and here it is at AZ Quotes (handily presented as a sharable image for you hip social media cats. See how easy it is for these things to spread?).

The quote regularly pops up in social media and in blog posts; such as this otherwise sterling piece from Lewis University, analysing the Netflix series House of Cards: “Underwood] implicitly agrees with Machiavelli’s idea that ‘He who builds on the people builds on the mud,’ a most undemocratic idea.”

Except – reading the line in context – it wasn’t Machiavelli’s idea, and he certainly didn’t agree with it.

Here’s how the complete passage begins in the most recent Penguin translation of the book:

And if anyone objects to my reasoning here with the trite proverb: the man who builds his house on the people is building on mud, my answer is that …
 

Machiavelli, The Prince (1532)

It’s a long paragraph, so I won’t repeat the whole thing. However, that opening makes a couple of things immediately clear.

First, Machiavelli calls it a “trite proverb”. Not only did he not coin the phrase, it was already unoriginal and clichéd by the time of his writing.

Second, while he accepts the proverb may be true for private citizens, he goes on to strongly argue that it is absolutely not true for men of power who need the support of the people.

How does the “trite proverb” get attributed to Machiavelli, while his argument debunking it is overlooked and forgotten?

I can only assume the person who first separated the proverb from Machiavelli’s commentary seized on the part that sounded reasonably profound, while doing away with the more complex and nuanced arguments (or failed to understand them).

Quotations are, by their very nature, words taken out of context. The challenge is to quote a line capable of standing alone, so that it doesn’t rely on the surrounding arguments or context to convey its intended meaning. In this case, that definitely didn’t happen.

Don’t Quote Me …

Do I obsess about quotations too much? I don’t think so. Quotations are a useful tool, but only when used carefully and with accuracy.

Whether you’re a blogger, journalist, content marketer, or simply a social media user who likes to share profound nuggets of wisdom, fact checking isn’t optional.

Once you republish the quotation, you become just as responsible for its accuracy as wherever you found it. So it’s always worth taking a little extra time to verify and confirm the accuracy of information and sources you rely on to make your point.

If your audience can’t be sure something as simple as a quotation is accurate, why should they trust the rest of your content?

Social media: Movement & counter-movement

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Social media: Movement & counter-movement

I’ve always been pretty strong-willed when it comes to speaking my mind and have never been much of a pack-follower. But I know my behaviour isn’t necessarily the norm. My brother – and I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this – was always far more likely to be led into trouble when we were kids. He was the one caught smoking. I was the one who put up with being picked on because I didn’t.

Or was I simply following a different movement?

Yes, peer pressure. Kids are incredibly susceptible to it. But so are we as adults and it sits at the very core of social media behaviour. Human nature dictates that we rarely feel comfortable going against the pack.

How to start a movement

That’s why I really, really love this TED video from April this year featuring Derek Sivers on how movements start.

What I love about this video is how it wonderfully illustrates how, after a certain point, it becomes less acceptable NOT to join the movement by dancing inanely in a field. The same peer pressure or feelings of embarrassment that made it a risky proposition to be the first to join in, suddenly flips over. The risk to your social status by not joining in becomes greater than the risk of joining in.

I think Derek Sivers’ point is particularly important here.

The first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. It takes guts to stand out like that. The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.

But, surely, there’s more to it than that. After all, there is a simple decision here; “I want to dance” versus “I don’t want to dance”. That question was the same when there was no one dancing and didn’t change when there was one, two or ten people dancing.

What changed was a social consideration – not a personal choice. Prior to rushing in, each dancer was inclined to being a dancer in the right circumstances, but had yet to be persuaded to. The only change is a shift in the social environment in which the decision is made. If my friends are dancing and I’m inclined to dance, I’ll probably dance. Peer pressure.

This is why the first few followers are just as, if not more, important to starting a movement than the first instigator.

…new followers emulate the followers – not the leader.

Yes, the leader might be the trigger, but the movement is created, spread and developed by the followers.

Yet there is an interesting side-note to this behaviour that was illustrated on this very blog last week in the incredible reaction to my R U OK? – I’m not! post.

Movement & counter-movement

When I first decided to post my concerns about the #RUOK social media campaign, I thought it would just be me being my usual self going against the grain of opinion on the topic. I expected some people to agree but equally I expected a lot more to disagree. That was the goal – good open discussion about a social media movement.

In the first few days, I was inundated with messages and comments from people saying that they too had wanted to criticise the campaign but had felt that they were also alone. They didn’t want to go against the perceived wisdom of the crowd who seemed to be broadly supportive of the campaign. Jade Craven illustrated this behaviour to me in a tweet.

@Kimota I saw how the social media elite were rallying towards a cause. I didn’t want them rallying against me ‘coz they ‘knew best’.

All of these voices that were too intimidated to go against the pack suddenly felt able to speak up. What this created was a counter-movement. After the first couple of people commented on the post and retweeted it out, more and more people joined the counter-movement until it grew way bigger than I ever expected.

So I was surprised to then receive another comment telling me that some people who were in favour of the campaign now felt intimidated against expressing their support because of the backlash following my post. This was exactly the opposite of my intention as I wanted both sides to openly and freely debate. But it shows that the counter-movement had the same ability to influence an observer’s decision to join in or go against.

The peer pressure and group wisdom had been completely reversed.

I don’t want to recycle the RUOK discussion here. Save that for the original thread. But I find it interesting to observe how a movement and then a counter-movement both had the effect of making it feel less acceptable to voice a contrary opinion.

Proportional backlash

Just like Newton’s law, the scale of a counter-movement or backlash can probably be calculated in some kind of proportion to the initial strength of the movement. It might not be quite an ‘equal and opposite reaction’ but we see it all the time. The iPhone is a great example of a movement that has incredible momentum. But this momentum also amplifies the the potential counter-movement – as happened with the release of the iPhone 4 and the signal strength issues.

Steve Jobs was quite right to complain that the media and consumer backlash was far out of proportion to the nature of the issue – particularly in comparison to issues with competing smartphones. But the scale of the backlash was not related to other smartphones or the seriousness or otherwise of the fault. It was dictated solely by the scale of the initial iPhone movement itself.

Movement and counter-movement

The initial action or trigger that starts a counter-movement empowers those who felt less able to criticise before – those who had been primed against the original movement. It does this by giving them an issue to focus on as a rallying point and a sense of validation in speaking up. The bigger the original movement, the greater the number of people who become exposed and may become primed through various means for a counter-movement.

People are waiting to say their piece. They’re often waiting for the ‘permission’ or endorsement or the opportunity to do what they already want to do. Once the first person starts dancing, or the first blog post starts to criticise, or the first mention of an iPhone signal issue is made, observers suddenly feel able to admit that they agree or that hey, they too want to dance like an idiot in a field.

So many movements are just waiting to happen if the right trigger can be found. The same can be sad of the counter-movement as well. We see it all too often when a celebrity suddenly goes from cool to despised or a product goes from hyped to ridiculed.

The trigger is immaterial – if enough people are primed, it’s just a matter of time.

Social media at war: Strategy vs tactics

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Social media at war: Strategy vs tactics

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Last night’s Digital Citizens event in Sydney certainly ignited a lot of discussion about what constitutes “strategy” and whether the word should be defined differently to “tactics”. Sadly, marketers appear to be far from any kind of consensus, if today’s Twitter conversations are any indication, which I see as rather scary.

If marketers don’t understand the difference between strategy and tactics, what hope our clients? How can we possibly assess the effectiveness of the strategy pitches that were the focus of last night’s event when no one can agree on what the definition of a strategy actually is?

This debate also touches on another hot topic in Sydney social media circles this week. There has been some debate about what constitutes a social media expert, our attitude to those who claim to be one, and even whether it is possible to be an expert in such a field?

At the risk of throwing a grenade into the middle of both debates; of course, there can be experts in social media, even if it is a constantly shifting chaotic mess. And the answer lies in strategy.

As Sun Tzu pointed out at the top of this rant, the confusion between tactics and strategy is certainly not new. Tactics and strategy are both military terms, so looking at them in these terms can shed a lot of light on how we should use them.

Side rant …

Before anyone suggests that war is not the same as marketing – and therefore the definitions should be open to personal interpretations that should be respected – Sun Tzu’s book is more commonly shelved under Marketing or Business in any bookstore, and not military theory. Create your own definitions of words if you must, but then I reserve the right to redefine any words that don’t fit my current viewpoint as well. No one person can decide or have an opinion on what a word means any more than I can decide how Twitter’s terms of conditions should be applied to me. So no, this isn’t a debate where we can respect each other’s personal opinions of what strategy is. It’s a word. It has a meaning – one that is rather important to our day jobs. Therefore there is a clear right and wrong.

I just happen to be right … 😉

End of side rant.

Mastery of war through strategy

Sun Tzu was a master of war. There have been many others over the centuries; Hannibal, Napoleon, Wellington and more. And there have also been many other generals and military leaders we don’t talk of in history. Because they lost. History is told by the victors.

Yet the great generals and the bad all had their cavalries and infantry and cannons and battleships and whatever. So what did our successful generals know that everyone else didn’t?

Why – and here you’ll begin to see my point – were these generals expert at conquering lands in the chaos of war?

Katie Chatfield discusses on her blog the idea that no one can be a social media expert. She suggests – supported by Dave Snowdon’s Cynefin framework – that because social networks are disordered, and cause and effect are only identifiable in retrospect, it is impossible to become expert in an environment that is so unpredictable.

I have to disagree. Sorry Katie. If social media is considered chaotic because of disorder and unpredictable behaviours, then war multiplies that chaos many times. Sure, you may have control over your own troops, just as a marketer has control over their own social media tools. But the enemy can be unpredictable. You don’t get to see their battle plans in advance. You don’t always get to inspect the terrain or analyse their weaponry first either.

Generals can’t predict an enemy’s attack with any more certainty than a business today can predict how many Facebook followers will like its new campaign. They can estimate, sure. They can use prior experience, certainly. They can even use spies (or market research) for some indicators. But, once the plan is put into action, anything can happen. And often does.

What generals do have though – as Sun Tzu points out – is strategy. It is strategy that separates the expert general from the cannon fodder. Forget the battle, it’s the war that counts.

Onto the battlefield

Why did the Nazi’s invade northern Africa when their goal was the suppression of Europe? Strategy. A successful invasion of Egypt would have propped up Mussolini, a valuable ally. The strategy was spearheaded by Rommel who was adept at planning tank battles in the desert and knew how to deploy his resources effectively. Tactics.

Why did Hannibal take his historic route across the Alps with a staggering 38,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 37 war elephants? To move his army into Italy ready for battle without being intercepted by the Roman force marching towards him from the Mediterranean coast. Strategy. How did he manage to get his forces through such a difficult route? One approach was to get past rockfalls by using fire and vinegar to literally dissolve the boulders which were high in calcium. Tactics – and clever ones at that.

But the tactic only makes sense if you understand why Hannibal was taking such a difficult route in the first place. Many other armies could choose to cross mountain ranges with large casks of vinegar – the tactic is difficult but not impossible as Hannibal demonstrated – but unless you were avoiding a large Roman army heading for you, it would probably not be wise. Strategy dictates tactic – never the reverse.

Strategy is therefore more than just an idea, as some have suggested. An idea would be the annexation of Europe or the invasion of Rome. It is also more than a conceptual goal, such as Hitler’s new world order or Hannibal’s defence of Carthage against the advances of the Roman empire. A strategy is a choice, a decision to go one way rather than take any of the other various routes to your chosen goal, based on an understanding of the challenges.

Your goal combines with your previous experience, along with your knowledge of the battlefield, the strength of the enemy you face and your predictions of their behaviour, to create a strategy that accounts for all of these things. You want to invade Italy. The barrier is that you predict the Romans will attack from the East as you approach. Therefore, you move your army South over the Alps where they don’t expect. The strategy then dictates what tools should be used.

Therefore, listing a lot of social media tools and some basic engagement techniques is merely a scattergun set of tactics rather than a strategy. A detailed strategy might help identify the one or two tools that could be the focus of a concerted campaign with clear expectations.

Every battle has a loser just as there are many social media campaigns that have tanked. Saying that the disordered nature of social media is to blame, or losing sight of the difference between strategy and tactics, is tantamount to surrender.

Rock DJ part 3: The show must always go on

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Rock DJ part 3: The show must always go on

Strobe lights and headaches don’t mix.

Stomach bugs and beer don’t mix.

But taking the night off and still receiving a pay packet don’t mix either.

I don’t think I ever missed a night in all the years I DJed both in the UK and Australia. At certain periods I was DJing up to three nights a week and holding down a full time job, so there was very little time to be sick. DJing can be a rain, hail or shine type gig, particularly when you’ve carved out that niche for yourself.

Social media is no different. Blogging requires constant attention, otherwise the audience will drift away. Quite often, I find myself forcing myself to produce a couple more posts even though I don’t feel particularly inspired, awake or even well.

Poster for Indie Night at Whisky's nightclub in Bournemouth, circa 1990

There are many times I’ve DJed dosed up on flu tablets or chomping on Immodium with one eye on the CD countdown and the other on the gents room door. Yet my worst experience of ‘suffering for my art’ dates back to my time working in club in Bournemouth, UK, circa 1990. Whiskey’s was the name of the nightclub, and again I was the Thursday night fixture with a strong local following of goths, rockers, indie shoe-gazers and punks.

I had a migraine. It was a thumper. Pills weren’t shifting it and there was no way I could cancel the gig. Firstly, there was no DJ in reserve who could play the same music. If I didn’t turn up, the club would be forced to bring in one of their mainstream DJs and the crowd would go somewhere else. Secondly, if I didn’t turn up I didn’t get paid, and there was rent to pay.

So turn up I did. Pump up the volume, flick on the lights, on with the show.

Anyone who has ever suffered a severe headache knows that flashing lights and loud music is like salt on an open wound. My girlfriend at the time (oh god, don’t ask me her name, please don’t…) was the only one to know I was in pain in the DJ box, running to the bar to fetch water for me and giving me pitying looks as I switched the strobes on again.

You might be thinking; couldn’t I just have avoided certain flashy lights or lowered the volume just a little? Sorry, not how it works. The crowd doesn’t know or care how I’m feeling. They’ve paid their money, bought their drinks and are looking for a good night. How can I place my own comfort above a couple of hundred or so others expecting a show of a certain standard? I was being paid to put on the best show that I could and that’s about pride as much as it is about money.

Social media works exactly the same – it is about the audience and not yourself. You can’t switch off when it becomes uncomfortable or inconvenient for you. If a particular social strategy turns negative for whatever reason, you can’t decide to sit it out, only coming back on board when it’s fun and positive again.

Once your social media strategy has created expectations – for example, prompt replies or regular blog posts – you had better be on your death bed to muck around with that schedule. Once lost, it will be much harder to get the crowd back.

How many blogs have one of those posts that are all about “Sorry I haven’t posted much lately. Been ill, work’s been tough, family issues getting in the way. I promise to blog more regularly.” Do readers ever care when reading something like that? Usually, whenever I see a post like that, the blog doesn’t become more regular. If anything it is usually one of the last posts ever to appear on the blog and signals the end – a loss of interest and commitment.

Commitment is the key word here. If you have a social media strategy, either a personal hobby or a business marketing campaign, you need to be able to carry on even when it isn’t fun. You need to push through the pain barrier. You need to deliver and keep delivering. After all, that is the implicit promise you made when you invited others to follow, subscribe, friend, fan or whatever.

So stiffen up. Have a backup plan; some posts in reserve or someone else capable of moderating the Twitter feed or Facebook page seamlessly on your behalf if you fall under a truck. Otherwise grin and bear it, because the show must go on.

Rock DJ Part 1: You don’t build communities

Rock DJ Part 2: Free is better than a cover charge

Rock DJ part 2: Free is better than a cover charge

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Rock DJ part 2: Free is better than a cover charge

When we first started running The Pit out of DJs Nightspot in Gosford, it was free entry. Thursday nights had always been notoriously quiet in Gosford – crikey, even most weekends resembled a ghost town – so there were no high expectations and we were on a trial.

The club was packed. That first year was the best we ever saw in five years of running The Pit and it became the place to be every Thursday night. We weren’t the only free venue, but we were the only one that provided that particular music. Free just helped the new night grow and spread that much quicker.

After a year or so, the manager wanted a change. He had noticed that some were coming every week but weren’t buying drinks. He wasn’t making any money off some of the crowd that came through the door and they were enjoying dancing to a DJ he still had to pay. Remember, he’s never made so much money off Thursday nights before, but the thought of some people getting a free ride was too much.

Poster promoting The Pit nightclubSo the manager added a door charge. Two dollars at first, it had grown to five dollars by the end. It might not seem like much, but it was enough to see the crowd start to drift away. Those who would casually come in on a Thursday for a free bit of fun – cashless students and bear-footed hippies – no longer came. And so their friends who had been buying drinks didn’t either. Less people in the club meant less atmosphere and buzz meant less people came back every week and less new people discovered the club.

The difference wasn’t huge and it wasn’t overnight, but the door charge was the clear before-and-after point that marked the downturn. As the crowd declined the door charge increased to offset the difference and eventually the night was finished.

Placing any obstacle to admission, no matter how trivial, can dramatically reduce numbers. David Meerman Scott talks frequently in books and talks of how Mailer Mailer multiplied downloads of their ebook – The Email Marketing Metrics Report – twenty times, merely by removing the need to enter an email address. That’s right, even entering an email address – significantly less hassle than paying two dollars – is enough to prevent people from accessing your content.

The Mailer Mailer website is now listed at number one in Google for the valuable keyword phrase email marketing metrics, their industry. Now, you can’t tell me there’s no financial return on being the top listing in Google for your industry.

Free is the greatest acquisition tool you can have. Even if you can’t convert a return out of every crowd member you acquire this way, chances are you’re still making more than if you charged a couple of bucks at the door.