Gone with the Wind was one of my favorite movies growing up.  I liked the movie so much, I actually waded through all of Margaret Mitchell’s novel as well (and the sequel by Alexandra Ripley, which in my opinion, was better than most people gave it credit for.)

A thought struck me out of the blue recently.  When it came right down to it, the most powerful character in the novel wasn’t headstrong, stubborn Scarlett O’Hara.

It was “mealymouthed” Melanie Wilkes.

I found myself remembering the scene at the dance in Atlanta, when all the society matrons were angsting about whether or not it was acceptable to “sell” dances to raise money.  When one of the Old Guard ladies announced “If Melanie Wilkes says it’s alright, then it’s alright,” it was a sign that they all accepted Melanie’s judgment as the final authority.

Scarlett was very good at attracting attention.  But Melanie had influence.

In blogging and social media, it can be very tempting to pursue attention.  And attention is not in itself a bad thing–in fact, a certain amount of attention, particularly from the right people, is necessary to obtain influence.

But attracting attention by creating artificial drama, stirring up unnecessary controversy, and throwing needless personal jibes at colleagues and competitors is a pretty short-sighted strategy. It’s certainly a lot faster and easier than creating genuinely original, thought-provoking, authoritative content.

Of course, some times in the middle of honestly trying to earn influence with outstanding content, you inadvertently fall into a hornet’s nest, and the unwelcome spotlight of attention that comes with it.  When that happens, you generally fall only as far as your previous credibility will let you.

In other words, only Melanie Wilkes can meet with Belle Watling in the middle of the public street without fear for her reputation.  People may complain about the “teflon reputations” of others, but the fact is, in this day and age, (and most definitely in the field of online marketing, which sadly has a somewhat sketchy reputation) you have to earn the benefit of the doubt by acting with impeccable integrity.

img courtesy familylife on sxc

I’ve been doing social media and blogging professionally for a while now, and in that time, I’ve learned that it’s not a sprint.  Which is hard for me, because historically, I have some issues with pacing myself.

I ran track for a while in school.  I had neither the explosive speed for sprints nor the stamina for cross country, but I did do fairly well at mid-length distances.  The 600 in particular was my best distance.

Every race, I would bolt out way, waaaaayyyy ahead of the other runners.  I could keep my lead until the last 50 yards or so, when invariably, I would run out of steam and they’d start to catch up to me.  Every single race, one person would pass me just before we got to the finish line.  I got a ton of red ribbons, but no blue ones.

My coach, God love her, tried to teach me pacing.  “Instead of running 20 yards ahead of the pack, try staying about one or two strides ahead of the next person back.”  Which I did.  Once.

I came in dead last. After that race, my coach pulled me aside and said “Why don’t you just go back to running at a pace that feels comfortable to you.”  I suppose she figured second place was better than nothing.

It turned out that by setting such a blistering pace, I was forcing ALL the runners to go faster than they would have ordinarily run that distance. Being an inexperienced runner, I didn’t know that you don’t run that fast over a lap and half.  So even though I was running out of steam by that last quarter lap–so was everyone else who’d been trying to catch me.

When you work online, it can be easy to get caught up in the “You better act now!  Your social media neighbors are passing you by!” hysteria.  There is a certain “keeping up with the Joneses” aspect to the social media/blogosphere fishbowl that can lead to well, crazyness.  Or at least, severe burnout.

Providing you’re dumb enough to try to keep up with it.  Which I was–for a while.

There’s the temptation to lean on the old saw, “it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”  But I think that even that fails to capture the essential problem with trying to keep up with the blogosphere, or even certain highly prolific sections of it.

For most online writers, it’s more like a triathlon than a sprint or a marathon.

I’ll be honest.  I don’t think blogging as a full-time, sole occupation is a particularly good idea, for a variety of reasons.  Maybe it is for some people, but not for me, and not for a lot of people.  For most people, even “professional” blogging is just an element of what they do.  A slice of the total work pie, which is in itself a slice of the total life pie.

Not only do you have to worry about trying to keep up with the guy (or gal) who doesn’t seem to know you can’t run that fast for that long, you also have to bear in mind that once this race is finished, you’ve got three more grueling legs.

I can’t help but think most people need at least a couple more “legs” in their lives to maintain a decent mental/emotional equilibrium. Even if writing, blogging and/or social media is the entirety of your “work leg” (the swimming portion of your personal daily triathlon), your “2nd and 3rd legs” may be keeping physically fit and devoting adequate time to nurturing your relationships.

Or you might be like me, and in addition to taking care of your primary work and doing blogging/social networking, you’re also going home to the full complement of household management sans a housekeeper and parenting small children sans a nanny.   (No offense to my husband, and not to say that I wouldn’t like to have time for keeping fit and maintaining my relationships, too…)

Okay, maybe even a triathlon still isn’t quite it. Does anybody but me still remember Bruce Jenner?  As grueling as the Ironman or other triathlons are, a decathlete has to compete in ten Olympic track and field events.

Better still is the model of adventure racing, like the old Raid Galoises and Eco Challenge.  Because you never really know what the day is going to throw at you, do you?  You might have a lovely topographical map in the form of your to-do list, but we all know how those maps can quickly fail to keep up with the changing landscape.

At any rate, no matter how many different “events” you typically compete in on a given day, you have to have the restraint to not spend all your energy on any one of them.

Most of the time.

marathon img courtesy datarec on sxc.

kayak img courtesy gundolf on sxc.

I think everyone who is passionate about social media has a story about how they personally discovered the power of the collaborative, community-focused part of the web.  I figure it might be time to share mine.

It was 2001, and I found myself with a Problem. Not a small problem.  A huge, enormous, unsolvable, insurmountable “what the heck am I supposed to do now?” Problem.

I figured I had basically two options. Option 1 would be to give up, crawl into a metaphorical cave, and drink heavily bemoaning what a bitter pill existence turned out to be.  Option 2 would be… not giving up.

As it turns out, I’m not really an Option 1 kind of person.  In fact, if this whole Bard’s Tale is my own personal Hero’s Journey (or Heroine’s Journey, as the case may be), one of the boons I brought back was the knowledge that I’m not an Option 1 kind of person. Which, quite frankly, shocked the hell out of me and a whole lot of other people who had me pegged as a fragile, sensitive, quitting-friendly sort of person.

But I digress.

The problem was, I had no map for Not Giving Up. Figuring a way through this particular Problem was not something for which my own experiences and knowledge had prepared me.

There was Information available.  I was a big fan of Information, particularly in Books.  My library card was active and well-used.  I found the Information helpful, but I soon realized I needed more than a Map.   This was no mere jaunt to find a berry farm on a dusty gravel road.  This was Frodo, ring clutched in his (her) hobbity little hand, staring out across Mordor.  This was not a little side trip or detour in my life; it was being lost in the Himalayas.

I needed some Sherpas.  Bad.

It started out as an attempt to find more Information.  I had exhausted my local library, and drawn a rough map of what I hoped was a way out of the Problem.  I’d started following my little map, and started seeing some signs that I might be headed the right direction.  So I figured I would fire up my computer, log onto the WWW and see if there wasn’t more map-making Information to be found.

That’s when I stumbled upon it. A digital village at the foot of my own personal Everest.  Attached to some of the Information I was looking for was something called a Forum. It reminded me of the old bulletin boards I’d posted to when I was in college back in the early 90s.  There were people there.  They weren’t experts looking down their erudite noses at me and my Problem from the pages of a Book.

They were regular, ordinary people–only some of them had gotten further up the mountain than I had.  A few claimed they’d gotten to the other side.  Most shocking of all was the fact that they were still there.  They hung around after they had solved their own Problems, and helped others figure out a good route.  They encouraged each other, and even the new people (the “Newbies“) cheered each other on, and shared whatever tips or help they could.

At first, I Lurked. I had nothing of value to offer, and so I waited till I thought I could provide something a little more substantial that “Hey, that’s great!” before posting.  I commented on a few threads.  A few people commented on my comments.  Feeling emboldened, I decided to start a new Thread.

It was nauseating.  What if no one read it?  What if no one responded?  What if someone DID?!

Someone did.  A few people did.  I kept posting. I kept working on the Problem that had originally driven me there.  I learned more than I thought my brain could hold.  Mostly to help myself digest and absorb all I was learning, I posted it on the Forum.

People responded.  They told me that what I’d posted helped them.  It was the BEST. FEELING. EVER.

I hurt people and got hurt.  I flamed jerks and got flamed in return.  I got scared when I realized that the ‘net can be full of genuinely scary people.

I got addicted to posting and hearing how wonderful I was.  I got completely sick of posting and hearing how wonderful I was.

I started other Forums, where I encouraged people to participate, tried to keep people from being nasty to each other, worked with the Moderators to fend off wolves and Trolls, and eventually handed the reins over to others in the group who still had the time and passion for the subject matter.

Somewhere in all this, I started blogging.  I learned HTML, CSS, a smattering of PHP and Javascript and the principles of SEO.  I went from working as an in-house marketing person to a freelance web geek to an agency copywriter.  I discovered the things I’m best at doing, and figured out how to weave those things together into a new vocation on the web: an internet bard.

So there you have it. Long as it is, it’s still the abridged version of the story.  It’s that story that gives what I do for a living context and meaning.  I know what story I’m in, and I know who I am in that story, and I know what part of the story I’m in–and that makes it infinitely easier to make even day to day decisions.

So if you’re bored with doing a standard, “five year plan” kind of look at why you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing right now, or if that approach isn’t quite motivating you, maybe you should take a different approach.  Maybe you should look at your own story.

And if it’s even passably decent, you should share it.

img courtesy nisey on SXC

Once upon a time, I was “the cell phone girl” where I worked.  Among other responsibilities, for about 40 employees, I was the person you went to when your cell phone stopped working,

or when you got a new one and couldn’t figure out how it worked,

or when you accidentally laundered it,

or when you dropped it into quick-drying cement,

or when you ran over it with your utility truck.

(Just a note: any of those last three pretty much result in the first one.  And no, you can’t just “let it dry out.”  And yes, I had to explain that fact numerous times.)

Generally speaking, I think near-universal cellular coverage is going to end up being a good thing.  Providing they don’t end up killing us all first in horrible traffic accidents.

Thanks to cheap cellular service, many people I know (myself included) no longer have a “home phone.”  This makes my friend, who works for the local phone company, excessively nervous.

That’s the thing about big changes.  Someone’s always going to end up getting the short end of the stick in any revolution.  As with nearly anything of value in life, there’s always a cost.  You may not pay it, but someone will.

I can still remember party lines and rotary dial phones.  In fact, when I was very little, it seems like I remember that the entire small Kentucky town that my family came from was on party lines.  Not a single person in town had a private phone line.  If you were quiet (not to mention nosy and lacking a good understanding of personal boundaries), you could listen in on your neighbor’s calls.

In some ways, mobile phones have made us more connected.  There is now the unspoken expectation that you should always be able to reach someone, or at the very least, leave a text message or a voicemail and get a speedy response. It’s a reflection of our impatient, “always on” culture of connectivity.

But connectivity is not necessarily connectedness.  Being able to reach someone nearly any time you want does not give you words, or empathy, or a relationship.  Technology can be a lifeline between two people, or a barrier, or a set of masks.  Connectedness is invariably an issue of heart, mind and soul–no matter what cables, antennas or towers might be involved.  And the root of the word cellular itself implies small, self-contained individual parts–or a room in a prison.  Connectivity can give you freedom and mobility–or it can be a leash.

As I get ready to head off on my weekend “girls retreat,” I’ll be in one of those rare spots that cell phone towers still haven’t reached.  In one sense I’ll be “disconnected,” unplugged from the matrix of social media and wireless access.  But I’ll also be nurturing some important relationships, and that is a kind of analog connection that is worth the effort to maintain.

imgs courtesy barunpatro on sxc and cerealfan, mikelehen, and bohphoto on flickr

I’m gearing up to dive into a big online community project at work, and one of the discussions that always has to be held fairly early on is the question of privacy. There are some advantages to having an open, publicly visible community, and some advantages to having a private, invitation-only or registered users only site.

Like most things, which choice you make depends on many factors. Here are some to consider:

Client: Is the client nervous about the project in general? If so, it may be smart to at least start out with the higher level of control that comes from a private site.

Content: What is the topical focus of the community? If it’s tech support around a product or software, then an open community allows your external gurus, the customers who are experts in the use of your product, to really shine. However, it your content is going to be focused on a sensitive topic, a closed community may actually result in more participation, as users feel safer to share their thoughts.

Control: How much control do you need over the activity that takes place on your community? What is the general maturity level of your users? Can they generally be trusted to police themselves as a community, or will you need active moderation? Are there legal issues to consider that require a higher level of control?

Consumers: What is the technographic profile of your users? Are they savvy enough to jump through the UI hoops that can be created by a closed community?

Commerce: Is this going to be a paid-access community? If so, is the entire site going to be “behind the wall” or will you have some areas accessible to the public to give prospective subscribers an idea of what they’ll see if they sign up?

Thinking through these issues is an important early step when you are planning on launching a community site.

image courtesy Fyffe on SXC