The now famous sweating scene from the 1980 movie, Airplane.

“Never let them see you sweat.”

What a great tagline from a deodorant company that also captures the heart of the prevailing work attitude in our culture. You, like me, have probably embodied this idea to some degree.

Whether you’re a consultant or a business leader or you’re moving up the ranks and trying to stand out from the crowd at a company, you’ve been told (with or without words) to be tough, strong and not to flinch. To flinch is to show weakness. To bend is to show a lack of strength. To lack toughness shows that you might not be able to endure through the long haul. In short: weakness isn’t acceptable.

The problem with this line of thinking, however, is obvious for every honest person. We’re all weak somewhere. We’re weak in places we know we’re weak and we’re probably weaker than we think in the areas we think we’re strong.

I have a friend who’s been very successful at a company for over a decade tell me recently that even now he still feels like someone is going to discover that he’s a fraud and doesn’t know what he’s doing as much as everyone thinks he does. He’s not a fraud of course. He’s very good at what he does. But he also knows where his weaknesses are. From talking to this guy you would never know he has this feeling deep down but he was revealing one of those kinds of thoughts that you know are in your head but you rarely express with your mouth.

The upside to all of this, however, is that weak people who are smart get help and get answers. If I recognize my weaknesses and am honest about them, I’m much more beneficial to my clients than if I’m blind to them or refuse to admit I need help in a particular area. A capable person who knows their weakness is much better than someone who may have a higher capacity but is entirely blind to their weakness.

Weakness doesn’t mean you’re disqualified. It means you’re normal. The question is how do you deal with your weakness? Do you really know them? Do you have ways to work through them or around them? Do you need to admit them to yourself or someone else?

Again, weakness doesn’t mean you’re disqualified. If anything, when you know your weaknesses and are working through them or working with them, you’ve become more qualified at doing whatever it is you do.

You still may decide to “never let them see you sweat” but don’t be afraid to say, “I’m not sure” or “I need some help in this area” or “I think someone else will do this better than me.”

The curious upside to knowing your weakness is that once you know it you can get whatever help you might require there and simultaneously you’ll be more clear on where you’re strong so you can push more decidedly toward your strength. Who knew that the strongest thing you could do was admit your weakness?

The post The Curious Upside of Knowing Your Weakness appeared first on MicroExplosion Media.

Scientists plan. They strategize what keywords they want to use. They carefully craft their titles for maximimum SEO benefit. They choose keywords with great intent.

Then there are the artists who really don’t care about any of that stuff. They just want to move someone, or make them thing or connect with them in some way. A meaningful comment means more to them than a search ranking or increasing traffic to the site.

Most bloggers are not entirely in one camp or the other but every blogger leans to one side or the other. Some lean a lot. Some a little.

I have always resonated with the artist side and a little something dies inside me when I hear someone talk about blogging from a purely scientific approach.

For several years I’ve tried to do what I thought was the responsible thing: embrace the artist side but keep a healthy dose of the science. Therefore I had a content schedule. I had goals for how many posts I wanted to do each week and I even pushed myself further down this path earlier this year. I committed to do better in 2013. More science, I thought, would be good.

Except what’s happened is that as I approach my eighth year of blogging I’m feeling more constrained by my own rules. I have ideas that don’t have a home because they’re outside of the categories I’ve tried to create with this blog. My creativity (which is where the energy to do it comes from) has been slowly strangled by the very science I thought was going to reinvigorate the blog. In short, I built rules for this blog that I thought would help the blog grow but in reality it killed the very joy this blog has been to me in the past.

I’m not going to do that anymore. In fact, I’m going to try to throw off as many of the constraints I’ve created for the blog as I can.

So that means I’m not going to do Monday’s Stats posts anymore unless I happen to want to talk about a particular stat and it happens to be a Monday.

I’m not going to do a video of the week anymore though there will be videos and they may even come every week.

I’m going to break the rules of good blogging in order to find the joy of blogging and that means killing my content schedule and my approach to blog post titles and tagging and all the other stuff you’re supposed to do to blog well.

In the end I hope to rekindle that joy I had in the early years of blogging.  The elements of the blog science are always there within reach should I decide to consider them again but for now (and maybe forever) they will remain on the shelf. Here we go.

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Online video ads: “According to comScore, 178 million Americans watched 33 billion online content videos in February, while the number of video ad views reached 9.9 billion with Google Sites delivering an all-time high of 2.2 billion.” The study found revealed some other interesting data:

• 3.3% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video
• The duration of the average online content video was 5.6 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes
• Video ads accounted for 23% of all videos viewed and 2% of all minutes spent viewing video online

Executives prefer LinkedIn: “Roughly nine out of ten (88%) business executives use LinkedIn “often” or “very often,” according to a survey of 139 suits by DHR International, a corporate headhunting and management consultancy, as reported by BusinessNewsDaily. What’s more, 73% said that LinkedIn is their favorite social network, leaving Facebook and Twitter in the dust.”

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Unsportsmanlike Conduct
This week’s news that the NCAA has outlawed the use of hashtags on football fields comes as a result of what several universities did last season: got smart about hashtags. The NCAA is afraid that hashtags are going to be a back door into on-field commercial advertising for universities, something they’re against. While that is a legitimate concern they didn’t have to extend the ban on hashtags as far as they did.

Thus far the schools that have used hashtags have been entirely school spirit oriented. Mississippi State, for instance, turned their end zones into hashtags last season with #HailState. Other schools put them elsewhere on the field using hashtags like #GoHogs (University of Arkansas), #GoHeels (University of North Carolina) and #GoBlue (University of Michigan).

Hashtags Are Logos
These hashtags are essentially social media logos for the schools. That’s the irony of the NCAA’s ruling because school logos are perfectly legal on the field. They can’t see that the hashtags as they’ve been used thus far are basically searchable, measurable and in some cases, temporary logos for their teams. They’re a dream for marketers and anyone at a university who’s trying to pump up its fan base or increase fan engagement and interest. Now, thanks to the NCAA’s myopic view of logos, universities don’t have this option anymore.

New Game Plan Needed
If the NCAA wants to outlaw commercial hashtags, fine. I can see how they don’t want something like #EnjoyCoke or #DriveFord on the field. They’ve missed it here in ruling out all hashtags though.

In a day and age when it’s easier to stay home and watch a game on your huge HDTV, this is the kind of thing we need more of, not less. While we see the NFL looking for more ways to bring people to the stadiums and engage their fans during the games the NCAA kills off one of the better ways to do this. I don’t get it.

As a college football fan and a marketing consultant I have to throw a flag here. This ruling shouldn’t stand. It’s only going to hurt the very universities they say they’re protecting.

The post Replay Needed On New College Football Hashtag Rule appeared first on MicroExplosion Media.

Mobile commerce (M-commerce) is up in the first quarter of 2013. “Mobile commerce climbed 31% in the first quarter from a year ago, fueled by growing tablet use and improved customer service, M-commerce now accounts for 17.4% of total online retail sales, up from 13.3% in the year-earlier period.”

Windows tablets are off to a quick start. The launched late last year now account for a little over 7% of the entire tablet market. That’s not much compared to what Apple and Google do, but considering they’ve been out of this space entirely, that’s a really good step forward for them.

The post Monday’s Stats: Moms, Mobile & Windows Tablets appeared first on MicroExplosion Media.

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The Bully
All the positions I could have played on this new team were filled with guys who were better than me so the coaches put me in right field. That’s where you put the people who don’t really have a role on the team.

One day during practice the other right fielder started picking on me. I’m not sure what I did to him. It wasn’t like I was playing ahead of him. Whatever the case I remember that he would throw rocks from the warning track at me and say things that 12 year old boys say when they’re trying to belittle someone. For the most part I blew it off.  It only happened a few times so it never escalated to a point where my parents or the coaches noticed anything unusual, but I would never forget it. Moments like those have a way of burning into you memory unlike most anything else.

Our team didn’t advance beyond the first round of the state tournament and as far as I was concerned it was time to get on with my summer. I heard that the bully moved away and I never thought about him again.

In the years that followed I continued playing baseball in an older league made up of 13-15 year olds. Midway through my 15 year old season the bully moved back to our town. I didn’t know he was back until the day I saw him on the opposing team warming up to pitch before the game.

That Moment When It Changes
I don’t think I’ll forget that moment when I looked up and noticed that the former bully was standing on the pitcher’s mound about to start the game. I hadn’t thought about the guy in three years but there he was and in a few minutes he was going to be throwing a ball at me. Did he remember me? I sure remembered him.

If I ever wanted to hit a baseball hard and far it was that day in that moment. When I stepped up to the plate I knew I wanted to make a statement.

He threw a fastball down the middle and I remember seeing the ball fly off my bat right back at him. Before I knew it, I heard a crack, a yelp and saw the ball take an immediate right hand turn to roll 60 feet over to the first baseman. The first baseman picked up the ball and stepped on the bag. I was out. So was the former bully. I hit a hard line drive that shattered his knee. I don’t think he played the rest of the season.

No More Little Guy
I remember walking back to the dugout feeling far less remorseful than I should have and being simultaneously shocked by what I had just done and the irony of the event.

In hindsight it almost seems like a scene from a movie where the little kid grows up and faces the bully in a moment of vindication. Somewhere in my head I think there’s a John Williams soundtrack playing when I recall that day. The little guy wasn’t so little anymore and that changed everything.

And that’s the reality of the business world today too. There was a moment when the customer grew up and got into the game. I don’t know exactly when it happened but somewhere in the last decade as the Internet evolved the customer grew up and learned how to play the game that only marketers thought they could play.

The Game Has Changed
Not only are they in the game but they’re good. They have power. They have strength. They have endurance. They have the ability to create their own opposing team. There is no little guy anymore. They can shatter your knee if you’re not paying attention or you don’t remember them or if they remember how you were less than kind or helpful previously.

The world of consumer engagement today is exciting and dangerous. It’s exciting because you can do things that have never been possible before. It’s dangerous because you have to show a level of respect and understanding for what they’re capable of. They have more power than you may be giving them credit for.

Play the game but play it wisely. Play respectfully. Play generously. And for heaven’s sake make sure you’re playing today’s version of the game. The consumer is. Your competition probably is too.

The post Analogy From Real Life: You Never Know Who Will Shatter Your Knee appeared first on MicroExplosion Media.

Facebook Most Popular Social Login Platform

Adults Prefer Facebook Over Other Options
According to new research from Pew, adults overwhelmingly prefer Facebook over other social networks. 67% of adults prefer Facebook while LinkedIn is preferred by 20% and Twitter by 16%.

Netflix Used By More Affluent Consumers
If you subscribe to a service like Netflix you are most likely to make an income over $50,000 a year according to new research. Nielsen’s new report shows that U.S. households with incomes between $50K-$100K are more likely to pay for premium content like Netflix or Hulu.

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