I’m a big Pandora fan, and many moons ago I had an idea to make a spiffy new station – I’d crowdsource it.

I put a tweet out asking for what song could you not resist getting up out of your chair and dancing to, and fed them all into a new Pandora station. The goal was the greatest high-energy, must-dance, spazz-inducing station I had yet laid eardrums on.  So that was the goal.

What I got was two things. First was the most infuriatingly annoying station in my entire Pandora collection, and the second was a lesson on the serious limitations of the crowd.

The Crowdsource Dance Throwdown

The Pandora Station ended up with a lot of good songs going in, but ranged across such a wilderness of styles and formats I spent more time laughing than dancing.  Plus, Pandora takes your addition of a single rocking song from an artist as a reason to add every lame ballad that artist ever belched forth.

I thumbed down some very obvious misses, but generally left the station as it came to me.  I’m going to leave it that way until the end of September, then start editing it to suit my own tastes.  You’re welcome to give Crowdsource Dance Throwdown a listen and chime in.

Crowds know data, but not value

What I realized on a larger scale is that crowds are great for sourcing lots of general knowledge but there still must be someone curating it, like Wikipedia Editors do for Wikipedia. When you ask for opinions without any guiding hand you just get a disorganized pile.

Each individual idea might have merit, but the ideas don’t all have the same value when mooshed together.  It’s like a salad. When a salad is in a bowl you can pick around the bits you don’t like (tomatoes) or add the things you really want (like bacon bits).  If you drop it into a blender and make a single smoothie out of it… well, you’ll get something very colorful but not so popular on the menu. This has not been my most appetizing metaphor ever, but you get the idea.

Be careful when you get input from crowds on yourself and your ideas. Listen to their input (if you want) but only let it advise you; never let it replace your own judgment.

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Recently I’ve become a bit of a hypocrite in the advice I give about crafting your online brand. Fortunately it recently cost me a client, which helped sort me out.

In general, my advice on this topic goes something like: Show your personality online, and don’t try to play it safe. Stand out, and you will attract the customers who value what you have to offer.

Insightful, right?  If you try to appeal to everyone, you will end up appealing to no one and be lost in the sea of mediocrity.

In spite of this sage advice, over the past few weeks I’ve found myself editing my tweets and Facebook posts, concerned about fallout over who might see them. I basically stopped blogging for not wanting to throw out ideas until I had time to carefully cultivate them into the shining beacons of genius I have little doubt they would become. And in spite of all my caution I lost a speaking engagement this past week. Why? In part because I was more concerned with being what I thought the client wanted than just being me.

Stupid.  If you have your own take on the world, let it shine.  You may scare away some, but you’ll attract those who appreciate what you have to offer.

Take these gents. They take an already polarizing singer like Lady Gaga, put about the nerdiest spin on it I can possibly imagine, and they’ve got 210,000+ views and counting.

As the man said, “To thine own self be true.”

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Earlier this year I spoke at the Social Media AZ conference in Tempe, and gave another revision of my talk on Improv + Social Media = BFF. As I explore the topic and give related talks, I’m drilling in on concepts that I think are both more practical and directly applicable. I’m still fascinated by the fuzzy edges of where these two arenas cross, but I’m working to nail down some core principles so I have a foundation upon which to build.

The talk went very well, and I had a lot of great feedback on what resonated and where to tighten it up a bit further. I’ve realized that I’m really talking to a niche with this approach – people who are interested in cultivating quality content – and defining and focusing in on that group are in my plans for future revisions.

Sadly, the video for this talk was never put on-line. I debated doing an audio track for this slideshow, but I think instead I’ll break it down into posts on each section. Then if it comes together well I’ll go back and build out the audio.

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Last year Evo Terra and I sat down to riff on social media topics, and we’ve been working to get some videos out with the goofy output. This time up, the topic is Twitter – why it is so popular, how it evolved, and how it can make money:

These were fun sessions, and worked well because Evo and I both are nauseatingly familiar with this topic, and because we actively employed Yes, And. There is always an element of creation to improv, but if you don’t know the topic you’re improving about you’re going to get tangential comments at best. By always agreeing and accepting what the other players say and building on it, you find yourself going in new directions that neither of you would have explored individually.

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This blog has been quiet, but I’ve been working on evolving the idea of Improv and Social Media for the past few months.  I spoke on it at the BOLO conference, and again at PodCampAZ, evolving the discussion both times. BOLO explored a wider range of improv techniques, including many short form games.  My PodCampAZ talk went deeper into specifics, like building a scene or character. Much of the feedback is that the ideas are interesting and people like a new approach, but they want something concrete to work on. What’s the specific application to themselves and their own SM work?

This is a bit of a puzzler for me, as I see improvisation itself as the application. The problem is that most people don’t have that background, and don’t want to take improv classes to get it. So I need a way to bridge that gap and build a connection.

The other challenge is that many people are far more interested in measurement and growth than techniques. I often note that when someone wants to start a blog, their first questions are usually software choices, getting readers, SEO, managing comments, user accounts, and on and on.  They don’t mention “Learning how to write” until much later, if at all. Human nature, I suppose, but all that optimization isn’t going to help if you have crappy content. I still need to address this, so have to connect to the measurement and interaction part of people’s interest.

Fortunately in the next week I’ll be able to try two new presentations. The first is on Jan 19th for Commpose, the local Copywriter’s meetup group. They’ve asked me to speak about improv in relation to writing, which is a slightly different flavor but still directly applicable. This is an open group with some great people, so if you’re a writer come down and check it out. I’m not that familiar with the needs and concerns of copywriters, so I may do a bit of improvising of my own on this talk.

The second talk will be at the Social Media AZ conference on January 25th in Tempe.  The topic will be Using Improv To Build A Genuine Online Presence, and I’ll be taking a few of the ideas – character, conflict, and scene – and exploring them in more depth. I’m anticipating a small group since I’m at the end of the day and scheduled against Evo Terra talking about Making Social Media Pay, but if this topic is of any interest please stop by. You can use the speaker code “Jeff” to get a 45% discount on admission.  I would love any feedback as I continue to ponder and experiment.

Cheers!

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Been working to shake the dust off of the site, and this video was a perfect vehicle. I sat down with local muppet Evo Terra at Sitewire and we decided to riff on Social Media. The first bit of silliness is below, and there are more to follow.

It’s safe to say we’re dead serious about everything we joked about. You can’t sneeze without getting twenty “Social Media Experts” wet these days, and the level of recursive pontificating on every atomic particle of social media is just insane. I have little doubt I could find serious analysis of social media somewhere online much more ridiculous than this.

The whole thing was entirely improvised, though hardly in the good sense of the word. Evo and I share the ability to, as he puts it, “turn on our mouth and let it run for a while.”  This is helpful in improv, but rarely results in quality.  We take turns trying to screw each other with bad set ups, and you can see in our faces when we get an idea we think is possibly dumber than the ones before it.  Yet we still managed to build some themes, create a little story arc, and leave no syllable of “social media” unscathed.

Many props to Joe Holt for editing this beast together.  I’ll link to the next ones when they come together, and in the meantime will keep oiling up the rusty hinges.

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To explain how improv relates to social media, I need to talk a bit about improv itself. I plan to dive into some of the mechanics and even some of the psychology, but I’ll start with the definition Wikipedia gives me:

Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one’s immediate environment and inner feelings.

Not too shabby, as it covers three points I wanted to make quite nicely.

Improv isn’t just comedy

Most people associate improv either with the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway, or the Improv chain of comedy clubs.  Whose Line showcased what is generally known as short form improv comedy, while the Improv clubs generally have stand-up comics and very little improv of any sort.

Improv is a whole range of artistic expression far beyond just comedy. It evolves as you use it, and you really don’t know where it is going when you start. For social media, the art form is writing. It is very easy to write without being at all artistic, but you don’t have to. Combine your style and voice in a creative way and you’re doing more than stringing words together.

In the Moment

This is one of the two big keys in both improv’s power, and how it relates to social media. When you’re using improv you have to be fully present, or you’re on a train about to wreck.

If you’re on stage with three other people and the director says “you’re all vegetables and you just lost your jobs – Action!” you don’t have a damned thing to work with except your own experience and the people up there with you. If you don’t pay attention to what they say, if you don’t tune out the distractions and really listen, you will fail.  Improv forces you to really listen and push your ego and preconceptions to the background – something sadly missing from many online interactions. People think several replies ahead, knowing where they think their discussion should go, and aren’t really listening to the other actors on stage with them.

In Response

This is the second key to improv’s power, and its connection to social media. If you don’t respond and support the people up there with you, you’re on a different car of that same train that’s about to wreck.

So you’re a vegetable on stage – that’s all you know until the performer next to you declares he’s a tomato and was fired because the police force discriminates against tomatoes. You now know something new, and have to build on that in your response. Are you a tomato, too? A carrot also discriminated against by the veggist police force?

When you respond directly to a fellow player, when you add information, you’re helping build your scene collaboratively.  You’re giving something back that they can build on in turn. You give and you get, and everyone benefits. Too often in social media, people just want to restate their position, brand, idea, or perspective and not really respond to the other ideas coming their way. Honestly respond, and the discussion (and the scene) really starts to work.

Combine genuine listening with real responses and you have the heart of my whole idea around Improv + Social Media = BFF.  I’ll crack both of these concepts open in much more depth, and look at techniques for developing them as genuine skills.

More info: If improv is of any interest, I highly recommend Keith Johnstone’s book Impro. It is an excellent discussion on the topic, and provided me with a number of epiphanies as I studied the topic.

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This blog is an endowment exercise, where I act the part of a social media enthusiast, with a background in improv comedy, and attempt to merge those concepts into an ongoing scene of amusement, philosophy, and education.

Under intense mental shock-treatment (whether they knew it or not) from the likes of Havi Brooks, Naomi Dunford, Jonathan Fields, Chris Guillebeau, and the amazing Pamela Slim, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what I’m really after in my online corner in the world. I came to the realization that while I talked a lot, I wasn’t always saying very much.  Sometimes it was for fear of alienating readers, or causing friction with my employer, or a host of other silly reasons that didn’t amount to much in the final analysis.

After a mental walkabout, personality inventory, and general navel gazing it started to coalesce. My long dormant passion for improv comedy and my interest in social media are connected, and that is what I am here to pursue. It may sound like an odd connection, but if you stick around a bit I think I can make a good case. Since this light bulb went off, I can barely keep up with all the content ideas that have been tumbling forward.

Can I turn them into something worthwhile?  Can I make a cohesive connection?  Will this be anything more than idle musings?

Time will tell. The show begins now, and tickets are free.

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