Walt Disney World Epcot Food and Wine Fest 2009 from Schneider Mike on Vimeo.

I eat and drink my way around the (Walt Disney) world. Watch my big fat head take you through the festival. I get more and more lucid as the video goes on. “The wine is not lime flavored.”

Steve Garfield invites us up to the stage to make media during his presentation on the simplicity of video creation.

Nearly every panel on Social Media mentions Marcel Lebrun’s team and the Radian 6 platform. With that comes the obligatory mention of the Listen, Measure, Engage methodology. During the MITX Brand Personification #MITXSM panel on September 17,2009, there was mention of the usual tenets of social media:

• Be transparent
• Do not attempt to control the conversation
• Engage

Each of these is riddled with theory versus practice, but the focus for now is engagement.

How do you decide where to engage?

Deciding where to engage should come from two angles. First, you need to decide how you want to represent your brand in social spaces and therefore you should have an idea of how you want to align with conversations that you deem important to you and your success. Important: you need to be willing to allow this to evolve.

offline your band is what you say, in online spaces, your brand is what the crowd says about you

The second angle is listening to the crowd. At #mitxsm, we established that in online spaces, your brand is what the crowd says about you. That means you need to listen to the crowd. They are going to dictate the conversation whether the brand likes it or not. A brand can choose not to participate, but there are consequences to ignoring a conversation with significant participation. Significant participation is not always number of people, it has everything to do with who is participating. Pissing off one influential individual can have a serious ripple effect.

What are the 2 Rules of Engagement?

Respond
A brand needs to speak to the people who are engaging. When someone addresses the brand, it should respond in kind with an honest answer. This is not always pretty. Even brands who are known for engagement like @Jetblue and @SouthwestAir get the occasional hater. [aside: @JetBlue seems to be ignoring a couple of haters. I am talking to them to see why they hate and if the brand has enaged them via DM versus openly]. It’s how you handle the feedback that counts. You can win the haters over or at the very least you can show how you graciously accept them and incorporate their feedback. Both win you points. Your brand may be late to the game because the crowd has already kicked off the conversation on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc, but it’s never too late to join.

Provoke
The conversations that you care about may not exist the way you envision them. That does not necessarily mean that the crowd does not care or want to have that conversation. Brands need to be willing to provoke, instigate, antagonize or tease out a conversation. The best way to start conversations is to seek out individuals who would be likely to participate.

What? Well, if your product is adventure oriented, you might seek out people in the extreme sports, mountain climbing, hiking, mountain biking, kite surfing and shark tossing crowds. Then kick off a conversation. If you want to be known as the fertilizer expert, then talk about fertilizer with people who like to talk about landscaping, lawn care and gardening. Do not worry about whether you know people. Jump in. Discuss your views. Push out content that your audience cares about. Debate the merits of your ideas and the merits of the ideas of others in the crowd. Eventually you will make new friends. You will even get to a point where you are meeting people “offline” and while you may start your conversation with a “nice to meet you” handshake, your conversation will pick up where you left off online because you already have a relationship.

Brand can be complex because companies and people are complex. Remember, when these rules apply to both personal and corporate brands. Mine is about social media, measurement, emerging technology, burrito enthusiasm, events, beer (which i channel through an alternate persona) and a little about style. I outwardly do not take myself too seriously but I do take my brand seriously.

@Direct_Tire engaged me today when I was talking about walking to work after dropping my car off for repairs. They got me to respond, but missed a chance to have a real conversation with them after I responded.

If you are a band, engage your fans or engage fans of music that you are paired with in the music genome project (Pandora), but find out what they like beyond your music. Analyze and choose the commonalities and have the conversation stem from there.

Remember, you are now building relationships, not just pushing out content. You can sponsor user generated content to get conversations going as well.

You can create campaigns using outreach programs that give people who like your products resources to create content for you, like Ford did with the #Fiestamovement. Oh and you thought I was just going to dog Ford in this article. Nah. They have made some good moves. And If you’re really feeling bold, engage your competition. That’s a sure fire way to get people talking.

The bottom line is that social media is not for the meek. What brand do you know that has a tenet of meekness? None. Is your brand engaging? What is holding you back?

I like clothes. I like colors. I like designs. I think the clothes a person wears tells a story about the person, so I try to make the things I wear represent who I want people to think I am. Gary Greenberg, Executive Creative Director at Allen & Gerritsen (my employer) and clothing afficionado and I often compare notes about our favorite designers. The other thing we like? Bargains. We both want to change it up a lot so we are looking to make our resources go as far as possible. These are two extremely disparate philosophies for guys who like designers like John Varvatos, Hugo Boss, Robert Graham, Ted Baker, Paul Smith and (angelic music) Barker Black.

So sure. I have passion for clothing. I like brand names. I know what colors match and I have an eye for shoes, but I also know what I don’t know.

I’m not always sure what fits. I don’t know squat about knits. I am not that strong in accessorizing or making sure that the stuff I buy is mix and match. So when I was approached to participate in the Men of Social Media Makeover, I didn’t look at it as an insult, I looked at it as a chance to learn a thing or two and hopefully kick my game up a notch.

Here’s video of me shopping with Emmi.

Shopping with a Style Consultant from Schneider Mike on Vimeo.

My thoughts on Zara

Enter Emmi Sorokin whose passion is fashion- or so I thought. Emmi actually is about putting men in clothes that make them feel comfortable. She believes that clothing is important, but she also wants to make sure that she understands your needs, your budget and your life objectives. OK, this is making it sound like Emmi is all business. She has a lot of energy and she knows the stores she will take you to cold. That means when you go in, she has already seen just about everything in the store – or, in my case, has pulled a good deal of the clothing in advance so you can just dive right in. I think part of the reason we got along was that I was upfront about my objectives.

Talk about your goals and your budget

Be frank about what your goals are in life and in business. Letting Emmi know a little about my lifestyle made it easier for her to recommend clothes that are not only cool, but make the statement that I want to make. I also told her that I was not willing to break the bank and that as much as I would like to buy a ton of clothes, I had to stick to a certain amount. Emmi knew how to make the most of the money I was comfortable parting with. That said, be realistic. Don’t expect Emmi to be able to clothe you for the season on $50

If you don’t like it, don’t buy it, but be open minded

I tried on a lot of clothes. We liked some and we didn’t like others. We agreed on most things but there was a sweater that she liked that I nixed. I tried on everything that she asked me to try on. I kept open to any idea that she brought out. As a result I learned a lot about how to wear sweaters, which I had no clue about how to do properly and I learned about a store that I never would have considered going into.

Have fun

Go in with an attitude that going shopping doesn’t need to be a chore. Emmi brings a lot of energy to the situation and she knows what she’s doing. She is great for fashion beginners and also for people who are fashion clueless. Either way, she will treat you like you are the most important person, she will make sure you have a good time, she will respect your budget and your goals and I guarantee that when she’s done, you will look great and feel great about your wardrobe.

Emmi did not approve of this.

Come Out During Fashion Week

Oh, and if you want to see what Emmi did for Mike Lewis, CC Chapman, Stuart Foster and I, come to the Men of Social Media Makeover!

Feature after wonderful feature, Friendfeed’s web interface is beautifully elegant. Control the flow of your content stream from raging amazon river to gentle backyard creek with easy-to-create groups. Beautifully done is the find / invite friends feature which not only allows you to subscribe to friends from other social networks, but lets you create a group on-the-fly.

If you’re a marketer, social media pirate, brand, celebrity or super hero, you probably have a friendfeed account, but are you using it? We know that content is king and friendfeed allows you to bring it all together for show – while also allowing you access to ALL of your friends’ content. Seriously. The Friendfeed team was tied to a chair, eyelids glued open and force fed Barney and Sesame Street until they fully understood that EVERYTHING must be shared.

Share Your Content

And share you can! Not only does it have real-time, native integration with 58 (at post time) blogging, bookmarking, video, status, music, books and news tools, it allows you to integrate anything else with an RSS feed. I currently share content from 18 different sites on friendfeed.

Share Your Thoughts

Friendfeed’s Like | Comment | Share features allow you not only to add your own thoughts to a stream, but post them to link prediction markets like digg and stumbleupon or other micromedia sites like facebook and twitter.

Friendfeed has support for comments on any content, but also allows you to pass it through to other social properties with the Share link. Want to follow a conversation for the ages? Like it. The My Discussions feature will pull up everything you like or comment on so it does not get lost in a raging stream.

Share Other Content

Want to share content on Friendfeed? Use the tool bar bookmarklet, or email it to share@friendfeed.com. Friendfeed even has ways to notify you when you receive new content- via text messages and instant messenger. It’s borderline sick.

So, how serious are you about sharing? Probably not as serious as Friendfeed.

The 2009 Boston Gravity Summit was held, surprisingly, in the home of traditional ideals, the Harvard University Alumni Club. The dark woodwork, winding staircases, private dining rooms and original artwork on the walls seemed an unlikely place for new media content delivery. But the hosts allowed the Boston social media scene to descend upon it, some of us in jeans, to tell our collective story to the public. And – this Gravity Summit was broadcast on CNN.

Hammertime

MC Hammer told a story of eyeballs and sales. His “social media” story was a story of authenticity. Ghosting, when someone else updates your social profile on your behalf, he shunned. He likened his experiences in the space to his experiences as a preacher (great question Gradon Tripp). His was the story of an entrepreneur- one who is convinced that he can sell the 250,000,000 Facebook users SOMETHING.

Shenanigans

Disaster Management

Surprisingly awesome was Wendy Harman of the American Red Cross. She told a story of a platform that is critical for disaster management communication. The American Red Cross has 150 twitter personas that they manage. She noted that the Santa Barbara Red Cross was more than likely furiously tweeting about the current forest fire situation in California. The Red Cross is also an excellent case for distributed brand persona management.

Worst Practices

Josh Levine of Rebel Industries gave a great talk on Social Media Worst Practices. He likened social media to a Bill Cosby joke about drug use.

I said to a guy, “Tell me, what is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?” And the guy said, “Well, it intensifies your personality.” And I said, “Yes, but what if you’re an asshole?”

He also talked about authenticity and using social media to go underground. When complimented on his use of up-and-coming “what’s next” hip-hop artists in a Toyota Scion campaign, he said it was part passion play on his organizations part, but part going to the experts in the crowd to find out who is on the bleeding edge.

THUNDER

Gary Vay Ner Chuk brought the thunder as usual. Although his presentation was shorter than I would have liked, he got across a few key themes. First: people who are buying bus signs and billboards in places like Harvard Square are obviously not watching the crowd. Everyone is looking down at their phone and not looking the ads. Ad spend? Wasted. You think Gary’s a wine guy? He’s a new media guy – THE new media guy.

Firmly grasping that content is king, he also talked more on the topic of content ownership and creation. In true Gary Vaynerchuk fashion, he told us like it is. He said: If you’re truly passionate about the content, you should give it forever. Do it forever, bleed out the eyes, you will be happy because you are doing what you love. In other words: #crushit.

photos by (and of) Gradon Tripp

I saw a lack of data-driven content in last year’s SXSW and hope these ideas will fill some of that void. I don’t have a free pony or even a case of Red Bull to give to you if you vote for these panels, but I do havesome themes that should spark passionate debate about quantifying the value of Social Media and relationships.

Uncovering Social Media Data You Can Count On

With stakeholders throughout the enterprise taking a role in the ownership of conversations in social spaces, each wants to know the impact of a relationship on demand creation, customer retention and support efficiency. This panel addresses how to make the numbers meaningful for sales, marketing, customer service and product teams.

Click here to vote for Uncovering Social Media Data You Can Count On

Extending B2B Acquisition Strategies Using Micromedia

Let’s discuss the importance of proper brand personification in micromedia spaces. We will talk integration of micromedia as a channel in a communications plan and alignment of messaging with strategic objectives. We will cover clear statement of objectives, managing multiple objectives, integration with CRM and community initiatives and attribution of a sale to micromedia. The overlay will be the balancing act of how much sales vs. thought leadership vs. customer service vs. your laundry list of others.

Click here to vote for Extending B2B Acquisition Strategies Using Micromedia

DataRock

What would this post be without a little DataRock?

<sarcasm>Shocker.</sarcasm>

Trent was a vocal advocate for spam controls in twitter. Twitter users know that twitter is not going to implement a big new feature like that in the near future. He announced back in June that he was leaving. He came back in July to announce his last shows and to talk to Dave Navarro. No “wave wave wave wave goodbye”. The @trent_reznor account is just gone. The @nineinchnails still persists though as he said it would.

Good to see he has not gone soft.

I grew up in Cleveland which meant that I was largely responsible for making my own fun. The collective population makes a great argument that there are worse places to live such as Somalia and Afghanistan. Cleveland thought it had a pretty decent music scene, but if you look back on the acts that were born and bred in Cleveland, you find Tracy Chapman, The O’Jays and Michael Stanley. Have you heard of the Michael Stanley Band? He’s basically the Bruce Springstein of Cleveland and Put-In-Bay. The local scene was pretty lame until 1989.

In 1989 music changed with the release of an album called Pretty Hate Machine. We got the vinyl in our high school radio station which was 100 watts of progressive rock power. We barely made it to the next town and had 10s of listeners, but the music was fantastic. The very first song I even spun was Knock Me Down by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The station was all indie and alt rock and when we got our hands on a new band called Nine Inch Nails, we were not really sure what to make of “them”. The station manager marked up the album with the songs we were allowed to play, Down In It, Sanctified and Head Like a Hole. She also put a little label that said “they’re from Cleveland” on the front to entice us and so that we would remind our listener that these “guys” were local. I played Down In It on my show and it caught me as something different, something I did not quite understand but I liked the sound.

The First Show

4/3/1990

NIN was known to play the Phantasy Nite Club, which was a small bar in Lakewood that I could not get into because it was an 18 and older club. I tried to sneak my way in to no avail. I would keep checking Scene magazine to try and figirue out it they would play someplace I could go, but they seemed to be regulars at the PNC so I gave up. About the same time, we got a glorious album called Deep into the station from a blonde haired goth legend named Peter Murphy. It was easily the most popular at the station. Peter Murphy was touring and the station manager got us onto the guest list. We were excited to go and hear Cuts You Up and the Line Between the Devil’s Teeth among others. We had no idea who was opening, but on the way to the show, we learned that it would be Nine Inch Nails.

The old Phantasy Theater was a decent sized venue. It could hold around 1000 people. It was general admission so we got right up close to get a good look at Reznor, who walked out onto the stage with Richard Patrick, who would later form the abominable Filter, on guitar and remix master Chris Vrenna on the drums. He did not look into the crowd. He looked right past us and the band launched into Terrible Lie. At this time I had not heard much of Pretty Hate Machine. I knew Down In It and Head Like a Hole, but I did not own the record and had no idea where to get the tape. There was not much chance to listen to it outside of my show so most of the material was new to me. This was literally the first time I ever heard Terrible Lie. My eyes got wide as the crowd moved together in a giant wave. This was just before people started violent moshing, so the pit was pretty tolerable. Trent had me at “Hey God”.

Deep Tour Set List
1. “Intro”
2. “Terrible Lie”
3. “Sin”
4. “Sanctified”
5. “That’s What I Get”
6. “Get Down, Make Love”
7. “Ringfinger”
8. “Down In It”
9. “Head Like A Hole”

The song literally burned itself into my mind as the crowd swayed and by the second verse, everyone was shouting TERRIBLE LIE with him. Richard Patrick was (presumably) so high, he was hardly aware of where he was. In between songs, Trent would yell and talk about what a piece of shit town Cleveland was. They played most of Pretty Hate Machine, save for Kinda I Want To which in the 8 or so times I have seen NIN, I have never seen performed live. Just as well. The remarkable thing about NIN was how their live experience was brilliantly different than the studio effort. I knew I would have to skip a few study halls and hang out in the radio station to go deeper. And speaking of Deep, Peter Murphy came out and gave us exactly what we expected from him. I mean he was remarkable, but I could not help but think that Reznor had rudely upstaged him.

Headliner

12/28/1990 and 1/29/1990
I decided that I needed to see NIN again after a solid couple of weeks of listening to the record incessantly. Luckily NIN decided to do another tour after Deep. I was supposed to see them Jesus and Mary Chain, but they cancelled for some reason. I learned every word of every track and got the station manager to add Sin to the rotation. They started to get a bigger following and outgrew the Phantasy Nite Club. I got tickets to see Trent and company at the Phantasy Theater again. This time they would headline a show that included Chemlab and Die Warzau. Die Warzau was another industrial act that I had recently found out about because I decided to find out if there were more bands like NIN out there. NIN was my gateway to Wax Trax acts like Ministry, Skinny Puppy and KMFDM.

Trent had met up with the boys from Ministry and the Revolting Cocks while recording Get Down Make Love, a B-Side on the Sin Single that Al “Hypo Luxa” Jourgensen produced. He brought the late, great cowboy Jeff Ward of Revolting Cocks, Lard and 1000 Homo DJs along to beat the skins. The stage was bigger and more technical. Ward sat in a giant cage- center stage. His bald head and cowboy hat poked out through the giant iron bars. Between songs Reznor remarked that we had no idea how to enjoy a show, that we were not at all destructive and that he was going to have to be the one to show us “pussies” how to do things right. He proceed to put his head in a noose on stage left (from the audience) and swing out while holding on to the rope to keep from strangling himself.

Sin Tour Set List
1. “Intro”
2. “Terrible Lie”
3. “Sin”
4. “Something I Can Never Have”
5. “Sanctified”
6. “That’s What I Get”
7. “Suck”
8. “The Only Time”
9. “Get Down, Make Love”
10. “Ringfinger”
11. “Down In It”
12. “Head Like A Hole”

After a wildly emotional version of Something I Can Never Have and a gripping and pulverizing rendition of Sanctified, Reznor pulled something out of his bag of tricks. The song started with a break beat a little like Terrible Lie and the opening lyrics were along the same theme, but what the fuck was this song? By the second verse the entire audience had picked up on the “HOW DOES IT FEEEEEEELLLL”.

It was not until I picked up the Pigface Gub CD that I realized that the song I heard was Suck. It took until 1992 when I bought Broken and discovered the secret mini-disc that I got the version I wanted. The Pigface version is OK, but it’s so understated and did not satisfy my hunger for the one I heard live. The violent onslaught of music and rage continued. Reznor continued to call us names and eventually started madly humping the keyboards, trying to knock them down with his junk and then threw mic stands at the cage. Ward didn’t even flinch.

Lollapalooza

July 8/5/1991

The festival scene kicked off with Perry Farrell’s Lollapalooza in 1991. With Jane’s Addiction, Rollins Band, Siouxsee & the Banshees, the Violent Femmes and Nine Inch Nails on the bill, there was no way I was going to miss the show. I scored pavilion seats through my rep with Sony Music, so I sold my lawn seats to some other fans. Now I had been reading about the tour in Alternative Press magazine. AP is one of the gems of new music. I got to know the editor, Mike Shea, a little bit through our radio station. He had a rave show on Thursday nights after my industrial show. I learned a lot from Mike. He had stuff none of us could touch, including the original version of Let’s Get Physical by the Revolting Cocks that they could not press because Olivia Newton-John did NOT approve. The revised lyrics version turned out to be a classic anyway. She could have been in great company with their cover of Rod Stewart’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy. AP wrote that the Lollapalooza tour had not been kind to NIN. The initial shows were in Arizona and California. NIN was performing in the middle of the day in scorching heat and some of their loop tapes actually melted. They had a bunch of equipment problems and legend has it they were actually booed off stage in Tempe.

When it came time for them to take the stage, the initial notes sounded a lot like NIN’s calling card opening song, Terrible Lie, but it kept playing over and over with a broken beat. Trent took the stage to raucous cheers and launched into “I’m. Gonna smash myself to pieces. I’m. Gonna fuck myself up. I’m. sifting through the ashes. I. What have I become?” It was some kind of new intro to Terrible Lie that was full of anticipation, suspense and understated energy. “I FUCKED IT ALL AWAY. now i’m nothing “. And when the time came, horribly brash, droning and driving guitars ripped into Terrible Lie. When the song ended, Trent looked at the audience and said “It’s good to be home.”

Wait. WHAT?

I had seen NIN 3 times. Trent never had anything nice to say about the birthplace of NIN. He always called us names and told us he hated us. I was amazed and I decided to do whatever it took to get from my pavilion seat to the pit. I had to see this up close.

Lollapalooza Set List
1. “Now I’m Nothing”
2. “Terrible Lie”
3. “Sin”
4. “Physical (You’re So)”
5. “The Only Time”
6. “Wish”
7. “Ringfinger”
8. “Get Down, Make Love”
9. “Down In It”
10. “Head Like A Hole”

Aside from throwing new songs into sets that we’ve never heard, including some that he never intended to record like Now I’m Nothing, another of the amazing things about NIN is Trent’s unstated philosophy on covering songs. If you take a look at the songs that he has covered, they are all songs that did not succeed the first time around. If they were homes, they would be fixer-uppers. They are songs that he saw the potential in. He then took them, gutted them and carefully reconstructed them in a new image, while still maintaining their structural integrity. Call it a restoration. Enter Physical (You’re So) by Adam and the Ants.

Trent Dives In

Another surprise was Wish, which would later be realeased on their 2nd effort, Broken. Can you believe this all happened before Broken? During Wish I stormed the pit and dove past security on top of the people and got passed to the middle- center stage. The pit was hot and even more intense than the pavilion, which was full of energy given the effort that Trent was putting into this show. Remember, it was the middle of the day and aside from a bunch of dry ice, it was all up to the band to get people charged. After Down In It, I took a second and looked around. Time seemed to slow down. There was a woman on a guy’s shoulders behind me. She had long, blonde hair and was really attractive. She was wearing a camouflage jacket and shorts, while generously showing everyone her round, ample breasts. I turned back to the stage when the band started Head Like a Hole. The pit went into full motion and the song exploded. People were being passed around and as they went into the finale, guitars droning, singing finished, Reznor did something I never expected. He dove into the crowd, right in front of me.

We Save His Ass

The pit started to collapse on top of him. He went fetal. I saw his face for a split second. He was smirking, but he also had a slight look of “Oh what the fuck have I done?”. People were tearing at his shirt and his shorts. People were climbing over other people to touch him. It was complete chaos. I looked at two other people, one to my left, one to my right. We nodded to one another and started throwing people off of him. I got a rush of adrenaline and realized that most of the people in the pit were high or wasted. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be and I only have to throw a couple of elbows. We grabbed Trent and lifted him up over our heads and chucked him back on stage. He got up and ran off to thunderous applause. Needless to say, I did not give a fuck about Living Colour or Siouxsee & the Banshees after that performance.

Thanks Trent. Thanks for the shows I talked about. Thanks for all the others I saw afterwards and thanks- in advance- for the ones in NY that I WILL SCORE TICKETS FOR.

Meg Porter who most of us knew as @megapixel was recently killed in a car crash.

She was 24, smart, funny, snarky and had infinite potential. Don’t take life for granted. Make every day count. I think she did.