In the world of social media, the term ‘clickbait’ has become a go-to descriptor for that is designed to grab your eye, garner your click, and deliver you elsewhere. It’s also got a bit of an aroma associated with it related to it’s propensity to over-promise, and under-deliver.

Clickbait can be a headline:

Amazing but true! Supermodel uses all-butter diet to make weight melt away!

A listicle:

What happened to them! 15 gorgeous stars who look terrible now!

Or a bait and switch come on:

I made six million with just one blog post! Find out how NOW!

Working in marketing and adverting, my professional Twitter feed is filled with clickbait. Every once and a while I go on a tear and unfollow the most egregious abusers (yeah, that’s why I unfollowed you), but they still find a way back in. But this is not about them. It’s about Scott Galloway, one of the very best sushi-masters in the marketing industry.

The Professor doesn’t make sushi. But he tweets it. If you don’t know Scott Galloway, founder of digital intel group L2 and clinical professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, go to YouTube right now and search ‘scott galloway winners and losers’ and watch any of the videos there. The dude is a riot of information and deeply considered opinion, and IMHO, his ‘Winners & Losers’ video series is must-see social TV.

Run, don’t walk, to YouTube for Scott Galloway’s ‘Winners & Losers’ webseries. But it’s his Twitter feed I want to focus on. When I call Professor Galloway a sushi-master what I mean is that his 140-character tweets, which often link directly to his content elsewhere, are like bite-sized pieces of magnificently curated fish flesh. And if you’re like me, you can’t eat just one, and you’re in for the full meal.

Take a look at this tweet series re: the 2017 Cannes Lion Festival—

I’m not saying you’re going to bite on any of the above—but I certainly did. Why? Because the topic, the tone, and even the tiny bit of substance offered is perfectly tuned to my taste. And the fact that I’m squarely in his target of marketing pros, let’s just say he knows his audience.

After years of watching, listening and learning from Professor Galloway’s work online, I know his personality and perspicuity. He’s got data I find enlightening, and an attitude I find entertaining. He serves me the sushi I love, so every time one of his creations shows up in feed, I bite

Clickbait = sizzle – steak.
Sushi = sizzle + steak…err…spicy tuna.

One man’s clickbait may be another man’s dinner, but my larger point is about the person in the kitchen. While I’m sure, based on volume produced alone, the Professor has some T.A.s working under his direction, the quality of the content and its tone and voice is clearly his. Watch just two ‘Winners & Losers’ videos and you’ll see, hear, and completely understand what I mean.

Sushi packs high quality content, curation, talent and expertise into a bite-sized delight. Clickbait is like cotton candy, more fluff and flash than food. The #1 way to keeping feeding your followers’ feeds? Serve ‘em sushi.

– D.P. Knudten > Chief Collaborator > COLLABORATOR creative
©2017 D.P. Knudten / COLLABORATOR creative – all rights reserved

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D.P. Knudten, the Chief Collaborator at COLLABORATOR creative, is a ~25-year veteran in advertising and marketing. Providing everything from freelance copywriting; content marketing strategy, creation, execution; and his NonFiction Branding™ system, D.P. collaborates creatively to identify, craft, and tell the true brand stories of complicated products, services, and companies throughout the United States.

You know you’re supposed to be social, but…

For too many people, even those who know they could reap real benefits by losing their online ‘lurker’ status, just getting going in social media is the hardest part. With all the channel options, and too little time available in the day, how can you get maximal social lift with a minimal commitment of time and effort? Read on.

Start with the basics.

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume you have the bare minimum social footprint: pages on LinkedIn and Facebook. Experts battle it out daily on which is more important, but the fact is, both are equally critical keystones to have it place before starting anything else. Why? Because one, the other, or both are the ‘where’ to which your social strategy will be directing any generated interest (assuming you don’t also have a website or blog).

For many people, these two sites are the first search stop before any engagement, and if you’re not there, you’re missing a great opportunity to make a first impression.

1st steps don’t get a whole lot easier than this.

Seriously. If only all All-Star awards were this easy.

Do you have a LinkedIn All-Star Profile? Why not?

One of the nefarious techniques LinkedIn uses to get users to completely fill out their profiles is to award ‘soft’ achievements for section completion. It’s a gamification technique—that works. That illusive ‘All-Star Profile’ rating is worth achieving too. Why? LinkedIn, like it or not, has become a daily intel resource for just about everybody in business.

LinkedIn is way more than a résumé because it can also be a venue for you to demonstrate your expertise. It’s a minimally invasive matchmaker, too, as it’s always suggesting others you might be interested in ‘Linking’ to. And it is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful tools for sales prospecting, job hunting, ‘just checking them out before we meet’ 411 and more. No wonder Spencer X. Smith predicts that it will become the #1 source for business intelligence in the future. From my point-of-view, that future is NOW.

So if LinkedIn is such a powerful tool for business, is there any reason you shouldn’t have an ‘All-Star’ profile. Well, Federal Witness Protection program participants probably shouldn’t. But for everybody else, it’s a no-brainer, and an easy, yet critical first step in any effective social strategy. Need help? Check out these easy tips.

Pick a channel—and master it.

Some recommend blogging first. But me, I recommend dessert first. If blogging is fun and you love writing deep, meaningful takes on the things that interest you about your industry sector, by all means, start a blog. But if you hate writing an email, I’d start some place more amenable, like a social media channel that aligns with your interests. Here are some examples:

Love photography? Instagram.
Opinionated, but hate writing? Twitter.
Deep thinker / Thought Leader? Start a blog.

By aligning your social media activity with an interest you enjoy, you’re far more likely to keep doing it. This persistence is absolutely fundamental to keeping your face, ideas, and brand (personal or otherwise) on top of your audiences’ minds. This primary channel becomes your de facto Flagship, serving as the strategic hub for everything else you do in social media

One of the primary rules of social: quantity is quality. Just be sure it’s quality, relevant content. And remember: spammy, overtly salesy or poorly considered content is rarely appreciated, and can negatively affect your image online and in real life.

Cross-post where possible.

There was a time when cross-posting was frowned upon. Some still claim it’s a version of spam, redundantly polluting the web with identical content. To that, I ask “Why are there so many libraries? They all have the same books. Why isn’t there just one?”

Ridiculous, right?

Rather than create content that accrues value only to the semi- or completely walled gardens of LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, et al, a smart social media strategy rightly demands that you seek to create content that accrues value to you. I can’t assume that a post to my blog will be seen by site-centric audiences. Therefore, I post them, sometimes in minimally modified versions, to all of them, and from within the LinkedIn / Facebook / Medium site itself (to ensure maximum exposure). Why? Because I can’t possibly be ‘top of mind’ unless I am. A blog snippet, with image, goes to Instagram, Twitter, and other short-form channels. But full versions of the post that originated at my blog are also posted wherever I can amplify the message.

There may be legitimate SEO reasons for not cross-posting if you’re an institution like the New York Times, but if you’re working to maximize your social impact, there’s no reason not to cross-post like crazy. Wouldn’t you like your book to be in every library there is? Well, the Internet is not, despite the wishes of many, a single library that everyone can access anytime, anywhere. You need to be where your audience is—and your audience is everywhere. Facebook-oriented people may spend the vast majority of their social activity within Facebook. Same with LinkedIn-oriented folks. Meet them where they live. Cross-posting makes it easy.

If you spent as much time as you should to create that social profile-enhancing blog post, shouldn’t it be conveniently accessible to those site-centric folks? Yes, it should.

– D.P. Knudten > Chief Collaborator > COLLABORATOR creative

  ©2017 D.P. Knudten / COLLABORATOR creative – all rights reserved

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D.P. Knudten, the Chief Collaborator at COLLABORATOR creative, is a ~25-year veteran in advertising and marketing. Providing everything from freelance copywriting; content marketing strategy, creation, execution; and his NonFiction Branding™ system, D.P. collaborates creatively to identify, craft, and tell the true brand stories of complicated products, services, and companies throughout the United States.

“I just don’t have that much to say.” That’s a sentence that’s been said by countless people who know they should actively participate on social media, but don’t. For every blogger or tastemaker who loves opining at the drop of a tweet, there’s a vast majority of lurkers who can’t be bothered—or more likely, suffer from “I’m no expert” syndrome (a topic addressed throughout this book).

Get over it. If you want to ever achieve your best possible online presence and get the all the career- and profile-enhancing benefits it has to offer, you have to add to the conversation in a meaningful way. But just like any gathering, it’s not necessary to have a fully baked, earth-shaking, original idea to share. In fact, the best conversations often start with a really good questions.

I met my friend Diana Pastrana of M&M Office Interiors at a recent 1 Million Cups meeting in Madison, and she shared her absolute joy about an encounter at a coffee shop just minutes before. Seems she was stood up for a coffee date, but stayed around because she couldn’t help eavesdropping in on a fascinating conversation going on between a number of older (possibly retired) gentlemen.

It all started with a simple, but really great question: Who is your favorite romantic male character in literature? Evidently that got everyone talking, and provided Diana with a truly delightful morning coffee experience. BTW: for the record, the consensus appeared to be coalescing around Pride & Prejudice’s Fitzwilliam Darcy. Good choice, IMHO.

You don’t have to have the answer. Your network will.
But you get the credit for helping identify it.

Go to any LinkedIn group, and you’ll see such lively discussions happening many times every day. A recent query in the Social Media Marketing group “What is your favorite social media scheduling/management tool?” was a simple, relevant to the group, and also a little bit of personal promotion for the asker, Hilary Meyerson of Little Candle Media. This sincere question yielded 828 posted answers and 447 likes. All for a ‘what do you guys think?’ question. And get this, even though it was posted for two months ago (as of this writing), it was still generating answers from members of the group. Evidently, that’s a question that continues to drive conversation. Good job, Hilary!

Now imagine if someone collated and analyzed the answers, and provided that intel as part of their personal feeds. That’s valuable information, worth sharing, AGAIN.

One question. Four meaningful posting opportunities.

Post #1: Ask the question.

“What is your favorite social media scheduling/management tool?”

Post #2: Report Interim Findings / Re-ask the question.

“Wow, right now is leading the pack, with 30% of you pointing to it as your favorite. isn’t very far behind, though. Are there any other tools that we should be considering?”

Post #3: Report Final Findings.

“This has been so great—input from over people from ! The final tally as of today is 37% recommend , 26% , and a new tool called appears to be a strong contender with a solid 14% even though they only just launched in January. The rest of the responses mentioned , , , and to account for the full 100%. Looks like these are the tools everyone should be considering. Thanks for the help!”

Pro-Post #4: Blog the results.

Now you have something really worth sharing: actual numbers and expert recommendations, plus first-name access to those experts who can add richness to your findings. Taking these and turning them into a cross-postable blog post paints you as a go-to expert in this area. All because of one simple question.

– D.P. Knudten > Chief Collaborator > COLLABORATOR creative

©2017 D.P. Knudten / COLLABORATOR creative – all rights reserved

+++++

D.P. Knudten, the Chief Collaborator at COLLABORATOR creative, is a ~25-year veteran in advertising and marketing. Providing everything from freelance copywriting; content marketing strategy, creation, execution; and his NonFiction Branding™ system, D.P. collaborates creatively to identify, craft, and tell the true brand stories of complicated products, services, and companies throughout the United States.

I continue to learn a lot about how to work the levers of social media simply by watching the master at work. I’m talking about Spencer X. Smith, and the many techniques and posting styles he uses to fill his feeds. Here’s one of his savviest: 

Seriously, the dude does not quit—and hasn’t met a name he couldn’t drop. This simple picture says a heck of a lot more than the few accompanying words attached to it.

Here’s how I break it down:

A. Here I am, Spencer, at a major ‘thought leaderish’ event. Since, I’m attending, that makes me a ‘thought leader’.

B. I legitimately praise the speaker, mentioning that I am a longtime reader of one of the world’s leading publications for startups and agility-oriented companies. Once again, that implies that I am a citizen of the Fast Company startup and agility-oriented business universe.

C. I’m happily promoting the multi-day conference on day one, thereby making this a valuable promotional shoutout for the conference #WITreps.

D. The name pile-on at the end? That’s a bunch of folks I met at the conference who might like (literally) any number of things about this photos, such as:

A. I liked because I attended the same event
B. I liked the keynote
C. I like Alan Webber
D. I like Fast Company magazine
E. I am a citizen of the FC business universe (just like Spencer, whom I am am now tacitly endorsing)
F. I like that Spencer gave me/people I recognize or follow a shoutout for being a ‘thought leader’
G. I like seeing myself (and others I recognize or follow) recognized for any reason
H. Spencer always likes my posts, and I reciprocate right back

And the list could go on for a lot longer. 21 people (including Spencer) are mentioned in that post, and it already received 23 likes within the first three hours—and while the conference was still in session. Now that’s not Kim Kardashian-level liking, but then Spencer’s no KK (sorry dude, truth hurts). But it’s pretty good for under 3 hours on LinkedIn, especially given the subject matter.

Minimal effort. Maximal effect.

So how much time did it take Spencer to get, process and post this to LinkedIn? I’m guessing minutes—maybe 10 at most. And yet the networking and personal-brand promoting effect of those ten minutes is surely worth far more.

Spencer effectively promoted:

1. The speaker
2. The conference and its organizers
3. All the conference’s sponsors
4. The attendees
5. The topic
6. The city of Madison as a top-tier innovation center
7. And only after all that, himself.

That is what I call an ‘unselfish selfie,’ and as Spencer points out in his recent In Business column, it’s one of the easiest ways to fill your feeds with sharing, value and laser-focused, relevant promotion. If you ask me, that’s doing social—smart.

– D.P. Knudten > Chief Collaborator > COLLABORATOR creative

  ©2017 D.P. Knudten / COLLABORATOR creative – all rights reserved

+++++

D.P. Knudten, the Chief Collaborator at COLLABORATOR creative, is a ~25-year veteran in advertising and marketing. Providing everything from freelance copywriting; content marketing strategy, creation, execution; and his NonFiction Branding™ system, D.P. collaborates creatively to identify, craft, and tell the true brand stories of complicated products, services, and companies throughout the United States.

Creativity is such an elusive thing. But if you have to ‘be creative’ as a fundamental part of your ‘every day of the week’ job, and you’re paying attention to the periods when you’re most productive (or completely unproductive), you’re sure to have noticed a few things about the way you work.

I found this out the hard way very early in my career as an advertising copywriter. Come mid- to late-afternoon, I could wrestle with a problem for literally hours and never come to a satisfactory conclusion. But it never failed—the same vexing issue that eluded me the late afternoon before was solved dead in the first 30 minutes of the next day.

Why? A fresh brain and rested body? A subconscious mind that worked on the problem throughout the night? Just not so tired, hungry and aggravated? Yes, to all of the above, but an even bigger yes to recognizing my personal Power Cycle. There was one insurmountable problem at that job, though. My boss’s Power Cycle started at around 7 p.m., and he was a ‘nobody leaves before I do’ type. Yeah, that didn’t last long.

Creative Power Cycles are personal. And not easily altered.

I didn’t waste any time trying to adjust my naturally diurnal cycles to match my boss’s nocturnal ones. All that would have gotten me was a lot of physical and mental pain, and a portfolio of crappy work. I got out of that job, learned to recognize and defend my Power Cycle, and was not only a lot happier, but more productive too (in both quality and quantity.)

As I realized this truth about myself, I started to see it in others as well. My longtime art director confrere Wayne Koenig, now a standout UX Lead at Raven Software, is notorious for killing it with amazing work created in the wee hours of the morning. He’s naturally nocturnal. I’m naturally diurnal. We managed to work together seamlessly for a close to a decade—primarily during the periods when our Power Cycles overlapped. Then we’d disengage, go about our individual roles as required, and then reconvening when necessary, typically when our Power Cycles overlapped again. Is that any way to run a Creative department? Damn right it is, and we have the awards to prove it.

As a Creative Director, I made it a point to determine my team members’ individual Power Cycles as quickly as possible—and then schedule things appropriately. Late afternoon concepting meetings? A complete waste of time. Early morning job starts for my late owl art director? Same thing. It’s not about pandering to the fragile artist and their oh, so precious schedule preferences. It’s about getting what you really want: brilliant, creative work.

This is no excuse. It’s biology.

The mental effort required to create (not modify, edit, kern, or optimize, etc.) is significant. A writer friend of mine once told me that he believed a focused, bent-on-perfection writer could only effectively write for two hours a day. And I agree. There are outliers, of course. Isaac Asimov is said to have written at least eight hours a day, seven days a week. That worked for him (as one of the most prolific authors in history with over 500 significant published works). But seriously, he’s the exception. Even the wildly creative polymath Benjamin Franklin made sure to identify—and defend—his most powerful day parts from distraction.

Smart guy, Ben. Knew enough to identify—and defend—
the most creative and productive hours of his day.
From ‘The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,’ circa 1793.

Power Cycle: you only get one a day.

For the vast majority of people, there is a single three-to-four hour period each day that enables the best, most creative, heavy-lift work to happen. I call them ‘Power Cycles.’ But unlike a machine that once started can keep cranking out work while given enough fuel, the creative engine is susceptible to just about every kind of distraction there is.

To be clear, a huge amount of your daily work will not be spent on ‘heavy lift’ creativity, and does not require Power Cycle-level energy. Things like billing, conference reports, email processing, appointment coordination, and all the standard TSCODB (time sucking cost of doing business) can and will burn kilowatts of creative energy. That’s why I assign such activity to hours outside my personal Power Cycle. There’s no need to waste your best mental energy on a “Sounds good. I’ll see you Tuesday” email response when you could use it to solve an intractable creative challenge. 

An example that proves the point.

Quality writing consists of three distinct phases:

I. Conception

II: Creation

III. Optimization

The hardest, heaviest lift? Conception. The lightest, ‘any time of day will do’ activity: Optimization. And right smack dab in the middle in terms of effort and energy: Creation.

Without a Concept, the ‘what am I actually going to write about,’ nothing else can happen. But, for me at least, the second I know the Concept, the challenge often shifts to a test of typing speed as the ideas are coming in during the Creation phase. While it doesn’t require quite the same power level as Conception, it’s still pretty energy intensive. 

Optimization is the phase that finalizes the written product. Spell- and grammar-checking, character or word counting when necessary, editing for clarity and audience—all of these things can be done during those off-Power Cycle hours. It’s not that these tasks don’t require professional diligence, it’s that they don’t require Concept or even Creative energy levels to get the job done well.

What’s your species? Know it—and respect it.

So what are you, an up-with-the-sun songbird or an out-all-nite owl? You must recognize and embrace that about yourself. And try to get more specific than that—all the way down to the hours in your ‘most productive’ window. It’s critically important to know when you are naturally at your creative best—and to then protect that peak period from distractions. During your Power Cycle, don’t just ignore email, turn it off. You can deal with all that stuff during off-peak hours, and if they really need you, they’ll find others ways to get a hold of you.

Power Cycle scheduling in action.

Let’s play out one common scenario: scheduling a meeting. The first step is to understand what the meeting is all about, and its desired outcome or product. Only then can you appropriately schedule for your entire team based on the creative energy level required to achieve that desired outcome. 

A weekly status meeting doesn’t require much, so schedule it whenever everybody’s outside their personal prime time. A big all-call brainstorm that requires the best from everyone? Schedule it for that elusive golden hour when your entire team is ready for prime time. If you’ve ever sat in a simple status meeting that happens to be scheduled during your Power Cycle, you really understand what pain is as you can actually feel your Creative energy being wasted.

GTIGCO (Garbage Time In, Garbage Creative Out)

There are people (typically called ‘Managers’) who may object to all of this. I can hear them screaming “Yer gettin’ paid, so you be creative right now, ‘cause I said so.” If you’re stuck with someone like that, I feel for you. But if your title is Creative Director, you know that true creativity is a fickle beast. It doesn’t come just because you call. It arrives as a lightning bolt to the receptive, searching mind—and more often than not, during that mind’s Power Cycle. 

I was once mocked loud & long by an account-side colleague for my ‘meeting scheduling modus operandi.’ It stipulated that ‘no significant meetings or presentations happen on Mondays or Fridays, or later than 3 p.m. daily. But guess what, that strategy worked wonders for the quality of work created, and client acceptance of the work presented, at those meetings. Why? Power Cycle management. Everyone involved was biologically predestined to perform at their best—and so they did.

Did that mean such significant meetings couldn’t occur on Mondays or Fridays? Of course not. True professionals can be called upon to perform with excellence whenever necessary. But if you are setting the meeting and have the choice, schedule your power hitters when they naturally hit the most effectively. Why, oh why, would you ever schedule anything that mattered when everyone in the meeting is not inclined, by simple biology, to give a … their undivided attention.

As a capital ‘C’ Creative, the only reason people are going to seek your services is because (surprise) you are CREATIVE. Defend your creativity cubs like a diligent lioness—or watch them, and your work quality and quantity, die.

– D.P. Knudten > Chief Collaborator > COLLABORATOR creative

 
©2017 D.P. Knudten / COLLABORATOR creative – all rights reserved

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D.P. Knudten, the Chief Collaborator at COLLABORATOR creative, is a ~25-year veteran in advertising and marketing. Providing everything from freelance copywriting; content marketing strategy, creation, execution; and his NonFiction Branding™ system, D.P. collaborates creatively to identify, craft, and tell the true brand stories of complicated products, services, and companies throughout the United States.

When thinking about social media, pay special attention to the second word in the phrase; media. The plural form of medium, it lumps every app, website, and service together into one all-encompassing bucket. And for many, that bucket can actually look more like a can of worms; messy, hard to disentangle, and worst case, not worth opening.

In reality, it’s not one bucket at all. It can be broken down in any number of ways. By content style (words, video, audio, still photography, etc.), by user experience (purely lean-back passive to richly interactive), and more.

The shelf life of this post would be minutes if I focused solely on the currently dominant social channels. Social media is an ever changing, organic universe. Coming up with a list of immutable rules is a fool’s errand, because Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter (the titans of social at the time of this writing) are constantly optimizing, refining, and occasionally pivoting, or completely shuttering their services, regardless of popularity or utility.

My advice: focus on the channel’s primary function, not its temporal functionality by boiling them all down to the Three Ps: Ping, Promote, or Proffer.

‘Proffer’ is an archaic word with an interesting pedigree—but more importantly, it starts with ‘P’. Consider it an offering to the Gods of Alliteration.

Ping. Promote. Proffer.
The 3 Ps of Social Media Call & Response.

Despite the hype, the rich intricacy of social media can be broken down to a few primary elements. I submit the following three sharing styles for your consideration, and implementation:

PING

A simple, quoted tweet can be the beating pulse of your social media presence. But be careful—too much irrelevant activity might drive followers away.

Ping
aka ‘See that blip on your social media radar? That’s me!’
Suggested Channel: Twitter (retweets, quoted tweets, status updates, no original content)
Time/Effort Required: Minimal

PROMOTE

Every time you promote someone else, you’re actually doing the same for yourself. Contributing your two cents to a LinkedIn post promotes the person who posted it, and enables you to demonstrate your expertise to peers and prospects. It’s a win/win for all involved—including your audience. (Great Proffer, Spencer, and nice Promote, Barbara.)

Promote
aka ‘Hey, (person I know / group I am a member of), here’s some input from I think you’ll be interested in.’
Suggested Channels: Twitter (hot takes, Instagram (casual photos), Facebook post, LinkedIn group participation
Time/Effort Required: Some, but nothing too time-consuming.

PROFFER

Making the commitment to be one of social media’s 1%,  ‘the Creators,’ takes time and discipline, but can be the primary thing that builds your personal brand and identifies you as a valuable ‘follow’ online and in real life. This blog post originated at my Getting Crea8tive blog, but is shown cross-posted at LinkedIn.

Proffer
aka ‘I want to give you this thing of value, at no cost, because we’re friends.’
Suggested Channel: Blog post, YouTube video, heavyweight original content
Time/Effort Required: As much as you can muster on a regular basis.

Pick a ‘P’ and get posting.

By categorizing your social media posting via this trilevel system, it’s easier to create a doable strategy that doesn’t require a dedicated team to implement.

One way to think about this model is as a continuum from least demanding / lightest effort (Ping) to most involved / most demanding (Proffer). For instance: A 140-character Ping-style tweet requires a far less effort than a deeply conceptual, YouTube video (Proffer).

Social Media is a beast that must be fed,
but every meal need not be a 1,000-word epic.

A regular posting calendar is a critical component of any social media strategy, but remember creating a calendar is not the same thing as developing content. A calendar is an actionable outline that can make the creation of content if not easy, then certainly less painful. How? By showing you graphically that ‘it’s really not that hard.’

Let’s say your strategy calls for you to post something at least twice a week. Two meaningful, well-conceived and -crafted blog posts could require the better part of a day to write, prep and post (if not two or more). Ain’t nobody got time for that, assuming social media creation is not your day job. But don’t worry; that’s the beauty of the 3Ps. If you don’t have the time or content to Proffer, you can always Ping or Promote.

A balanced posting week might look something like this:

Monday: Play ‘catch up’. Ping appropriately (or not at all).
Time/Content creation weight: Light.

Tuesday: Ping
(Twitter / could be hot take, retweet, quoted tweet)
Time/Content creation weight: Light.

Wednesday: Consume social media, Promote something you’ve found.
Time/Content creation weight: Medium.

Thursday: Proffer
(e.g., blog post, cross-posted where possible)
Time/Content creation weight: Heavy.

Friday: Followups from blog post response (’like’ likes, shout out to quoted tweets, etc.)

Time/Content creation weight: Medium.

The duration of your efforts might have to be spread out over two-weeks instead of one depending on work, travel, and family obligations. Maybe the strategic timing of your social presence should be a little less aggressive. But a schedule, even one this loose, is the skeletal system of strategy, and execution is its muscle. Without both working seamlessly together, everything falls apart.

Here’s the biggest, baddest secret to this entire 3Ps strategy:
You don’t have to be an omniscient social guru. Or a master of video, audio, or Adobe Creative Suite. And you don’t ever have to do any Proffer level heavy-lifting to have a successful social media presence on social media.
 
But you do have to do something, and with clock-like regularly.

Ping on a regular basis. Promote whomever whenever possible. And who knows, you just might come up with something worth Proffering—and then you can because you’ve already developed the muscles and skills needed to do so.
 

Executing the Three Ps (as part of a comprehensive strategy) is like going to the gym. Don’t just get the membership. If you want the results, you have to do the work. So Ping, Promote, and Proffer, according to a realistic workout schedule that you can manage and maintain for the long run.

– D.P. Knudten > Chief Collaborator > COLLABORATOR creative

 
©2017 D.P. Knudten / COLLABORATOR creative – all rights reserved

+++++

D.P. Knudten, the Chief Collaborator at COLLABORATOR creative, is a ~25-year veteran in advertising and marketing. Providing everything from freelance copywriting; content marketing strategy, creation, execution; and his NonFiction Branding™ system, D.P. collaborates creatively to identify, craft, and tell the true brand stories of complicated products, services, and companies throughout the United States.

I am so excited to be presenting at my favorite Madison sharing site, DreamBank, on Tuesday, July 11, 2017, from 9 to 10:15 a.m.

You can register for this FREE presentation at amfam.com/dreambank 

If you’ve never been to a DreamBank event, check out my writeup about this amazing MSN resource: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/getting-creative-earn-free-mbia-dreambank-d-p-knudten 

RSVP today to reserve your spot. I hope to see you there! – dp

For many creative types, if anything is possible, nothing is. A provocative over-statement, perhaps, but it’s often true when trying to create work, art, music, poetry, and baked goods.

Endless possibility is often creatively debilitating. I mean, where to start?
For me, it’s parameters, as in “let’s tightly define the parameters of this project.”

Classical poetic forms? Parameters.
A cogent Creative Brief? Parameters.
A stretched canvas? Parameters.
Grandma’s rye bread recipe? Parameters.

Without parameters, there’s no wall to push against. No creative handcuffs to overcome. No rules to bend, ignore, or outright break. For art directors and copywriters, there’s nothing worse than a Creative Brief that has no defined parameters.

But one critical warning: all parameters are not created equal.
There’s always one that trumps all others.
I call this the “prime parameter.”

An example: a trade show presence. By its very nature, even with an unlimited budget for creative and execution, there’s a prime parameter that commands what is, and is not, possible: time. All other parameters are subservient to this one. And if you think otherwise, you better have a time machine come the night before the show and your booth graphics are “in transit.”

As a Creative, I have a love / hate / mostly hate / “please, don’t leave me!” relationship with parameters. Without them, it’s a waste of time to even “get started thinking” about a project. Come back to me when there’s a defined budget, timeline, and client-blessed brief. But I also LOVE railing against them (e.g., “@#$%%^! If we only had a decent budget / timeline / client /planetary alignment we could do so much better work!)

You know the old marketing metaphor about the triangle of time, cost, and quality (“Choose two, and we can do it”)? Well, it’s true—and an attempt to get the client to understand the necessity of defining the project’s prime parameter. Even though the metaphor suggests there are two key parameters, in reality, there’s only one (and that one has definitive effects the other of the two).

What’s your prime parameter? Cost, Time, Quality, Award-winning, Impress my Boss; these are all examples of a prime parameter that creatives can work with. And cheat against.

So figure out your project’s prime parameter. Then we can all get to work.

– D.P. Knudten > Chief Collaborator > COLLABORATOR creative
 

©2017 D.P. Knudten / COLLABORATOR creative – all rights reserved

It happened again. A once rapidly rising social media platform—the hyper-locally focused, anonymous chat-oriented Yik Yak—bites the dust. A victim of its own fundamentally flawed service model, the once white-hot tech star (with a reported ~$400 million valuation at its peak) burnt out and was snapped up by Square for just $1 million.

A sad story that serves up a sobering message.

Alas, poor Yik Yak. And Vine, iTunes Ping, Orkut, Xanga, Friendster—you get the drift. Each of these attempts at scalable, sustainable social community building is dead, has pivoted, or relying on deep-pocketed life support. The reasons why are many, varied, and not going to be debated here. But I’d like to make a larger, more personal point: the importance of mastering technique, not just tools.

The Google giveth. And the Google taketh away.

I truly believe one thing: if you don’t own it, it’s not yours. The truth of that statement has been proven over and over again by our search overlords, Google. They more or less killed RSS with Google Reader—and then killed it too. And don’t forget other Goognitiatives like Google Video, Google Browser Sync, Google Buzz, plus an entire graveyard of others.

I’m not saying Google can’t or shouldn’t shutter whatever they want to, but am trying to make a bigger existential point: Any tool, even ones your career depends on, can be removed from your toolbox at any time (just ask the artists formerly known as Vine Stars.)

Want to build a car? File a steel bar.

I remember watching a documentary about one of the top German automobile manufacturers (BMW or Mercedes Benz?). It showed how the company onboards new employees: by having them manually file a bar of solid steel—for a solid week. Eight hours a day, with a hand file, trying to get a perfect 90-degree edge on a bar of steel. As I recall, the goal of that kind of ‘wax on, wax off’ tedium was to impress upon those new employees several things.

1. You have to meet steel where the material lives.

2. You can’t force it, but you can shape it.

3. Tools are to be mastered and respected, but are only as good as the hands (and brain) that wields them.

By the end of that week, each new employee develops a cellular-level understanding that there is a right way to do things—and that’s what the brand expects.

I’d argue there’s even more to be learned from that story. Things like discipline, diligence, respect for craftsmanship, and attention to detail. But for me, the #1 takeaway was this: master the technique, regardless of the tool. Tools can, and will change, but first principle level techniques (e.g., in cooking; frying, broiling, baking, et al) are forever.

Said another way:

Don’t confuse technique with software key commands.

Software key commands change. Techniques don’t.

Remember when Apple first released Final Cut X?

IMHO, the ensuing consternation from pro-editors was all about key command level concerns; the inevitable user interface changes that infuriate the expert user. But its first principle level techniques of editing changed not a whit. Try this: Watch any contemporary movie with the audio off. Pay attention to the techniques used to transition from scene to scene as the movie tells its story visually. Now do the same thing with Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925).

The editorial techniques used then are the editorial techniques used now. What’s the difference between a box office bomb and an Academy Award? Talent all across the board from screenwriter to end title designer, all dedicated to one fundamental focus: communicating story. 

What defines a master carpenter: tools—or technique?

Antonio Stradivari crafted the world’s greatest violins with only the most rudimentary of hand tools. Would he be better off with a modern CNC milling machine? I highly doubt it. The fact is, all the brand and app names mentioned above don’t matter. To focus solely on optimizing for ‘Social Platform X’ is to court your obsolescence. Video did not kill the radio star, just as radio didn’t kill live performance, and TV did not kill movies. But not being able to effectively communicate your story? That’s deadly.

Storytelling transcends channel and platform.

Want to future-proof your career? Learn, and continue to develop, the first principle techniques of your craft, knowing that the key commands will take care of themselves. And never forget, it all in service to achieving one disciplined goal: presenting a story people actually want to engage with.

In other words: 

Master your craft’s ABCs, and let the APPs take care of themselves.

– D.P. Knudten > Chief Collaborator > COLLABORATOR creative

©2017 D.P. Knudten / COLLABORATOR creative – all rights reserved

I originally posted this in 2013, but given the amount of bad bro behavior going on, I think it’s worth an update and a repost. -dp

I ran into an HR situation today that was quickly resolved with three simple words:

1. Dude
2. Not
3. Cool
 
When used in combination, they form a phrase of surpassing power, an incantation capable of transmogrifying a raging jackass into a repentant basset hound.
 
“Dude, not cool” (DNC) is a defacto code that’s pretty much guyiversal. And it’s applicable everywhere and anywhere a male (of any age) has crossed over into Jerkistan.
 
Now it doesn’t work on every man or boy. There’s always a troll subset that delights in pushing buttons and making people uncomfortable, head-shakingly annoyed or downright angry. Such individuals are hopeless and can be simply described by an equally powerful term: D-Bag.
 
But DNC works wonderfully on those who really DON’T want to hurt feelings, and have no bad intentions but occasionally display a deficit of the appropriate sensibility for any given occasion (e.g, me.)

If it takes a village to raise a child,
it takes a neigh BRAH! hood to calibrate a man.

The guy who uses “it was acceptable then” phraseology that’s become unacceptable now; the dude who excessively ogles the server at dinner; the husband who jokingly belittles his wife in public: these are all recalibrate-able men. But the only ones who can truly make this adjustment happen are male peers using “Dude, not cool” or one of it’s many variants (e.g., “Don’t be a fill in the blank.”)
 
Boorish, obnoxious, and blatantly antisocial male behavior happens when respected peers say nothing. ‘Locker Room Talk’ only happens when others in the locker room tolerate it. And you don’t have to go all Puritan to make your point. All it takes is a simple “Dude, not cool.” and you’ve saved a decent guy from embarrassing himself, and given him valuable calibration on what’s acceptable—and what you won’t put up with.
 
Is there a female equivalent of this highly effective rejoinder? Yes. It’s not verbal, but doesn’t have to be (it’s that formidable.) It’s called “The Look,” a facial communication of visceral distaste that is the human equivalent of using a magnifying glass on ants.
 
But even these lasers of personality course correction never work on those who depend on “Wha’d I say?” to smooth over their purposeful missteps. That type of behavior requires an opposite-gender boycott—for life.

 
– D.P. Knudten
Chief Collaborator
COLLABORATOR creative