Five Monkey Wrenches For The Future Of Public Relations

Public relations is in crisis and it is too drunk on marginal successes to see it. This isn't a criticism. It's a fact, part of an objective analysis conducted every few months to determine what students need to glean from my class, Writing For Public Relations, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

More than any other year, this year has marked the most profound transformation and most of it isn't necessarily for the better. The entire industry seems distracted, attempting to decipher the same challenges that almost everyone in communication has to reconcile — with social media damaging a good chunk of marketing and advertising, stock photography damaging photographers, templates damaging graphic designers, and crowd-sourced content damaging commercial writers. It's the same all over.

The creative and commercial arts are continually being crushed under the weight of becoming cut rate commodities. Maybe Keen was partly right. The argument that social media belongs to the young is the same argument that makes social media a non-profession. And knowing that alone makes it all the more perplexing why public relations professionals continue to fight for ownership of everything.

The five hot topics for public relations that are monkey wrenches in disguise. 

Social Media. Public relations professionals keep making the case they deserve to own social media and maybe they already do in some circles. There aren't many firms left that shy away from listing it as a viable service. Some firms even secretly loathe it, but list it and assign the task to interns at cut rates.

The reason some practitioners said they deserve social is based on claims that they knew more about a peculiar combination of writing content, pop culture, and crisis management (which really means the most benign five-step crisis communication process). But what many of them deliver is paramount to publicity, with the measurement being publicity. That's not public relations. It's marketing.

And where that creates a quandary for public relations professionals in the future is that their field is being demoted from strategic thinking into commoditized task work that pays a lower rate. Ergo, public relations might "win" social media, but the cost won't be worth the expense as practitioners become online customer service representatives over the long term.

Content Management. Although not much different from social media, content marketing is the new buzz moniker for social media. It places more weight on writing and/or producing content (while avoiding old-school terminology like "blogs"), e.g., distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined target audience with the objective of driving (ideally profitable action) customer action.

Public relations wants to own content marketing for the same reasons they want to own social media. They believe that content marketing plays to the strengths of public relations because brand content produced by public relations firms understands "the news agenda as opposed to a direct sales hook."

But all too often, what is happening in the hands of public relations is that exposure becomes the only measurement and it causes companies to burn up money "marketing content" as opposed to the products they make or the services they offer. Expect it to get worse as everyone demands eyeballs.

Journalism Devolution. One of the primary drivers of public relations to become more like corporate-sponsored media outlets is the influx of journalists into public relations. Many of them make the move for two reasons: they want to make more money than they can as journalists or they were laid off by newspapers. 

At the same time, the remaining news outlets continue to struggle too. In order to capture eyeballs, they are increasingly interested in reporting what's short and popular as opposed to the old school objective "news agenda." The value of a reporter isn't reporting relevance anymore; it's more about online eyeballs too.

Fewer reporters means that public relations' previous ownership of "media relations" has taken a hit as more and more companies would rather have a viral video on YouTube than a story in the New York Times. And now the challenge public relations is trying to take on is that the same people who gave us the dry-as-toast or marketing-fluff-and-puff press releases want us to believe they write better.

Search Engine Optimization. When Forbes broke the article that called public relations the new search engine optimization, the same story appeared in an alternative universe but with a different headline all together. It declared that public relations had committed online suicide.

Instead of forging relationships with various publics to meet mutual goals and establish an unparalleled level of trust, the new public relations professional tool box contains an arsenal of tidbits like "how to come up with better link bait" and "how to crowdsource for content when all your ideas suck."

While there is nothing wrong with knowing the tactics, it's still hard to believe that a profession so fearful of being marginalized would jump on the bandwagon and marginalize themselves. Ergo, the last person invited to sit at the executive table is the one who will drone on and on about "keywords."

Measurement Forever. Public relations is closing on a 100-year history since adopting a new name for a professional that grew out of propaganda and public relations measurement is still all over the map. Years ago, I made the case that measurement was simply a matter of measuring the outcome to the intent but too many returned to the ever popular (and easily gamed) measurement of exposure.

Some will put a price tag on it. Some will count on klout. And some will make up their own formula, with various degrees of including outcomes as a viable measurement. In more cases, public relations is now adopting the cheapest direct marketing measurements as there own while claiming they are light years ahead of marketing.

Look, most of us know that measurement will never be an exact science unless everybody agrees to assign values to intangible measures. Nobody readily agrees on the monetary value of things like positive public sentiment, brand loyalty, or varied degrees of trust and reputation, etc. And they never will because those valuations are dependent on the individual organization. It's about that simple.

What is public relations anymore, anyway?

When you take a long, hard look at what are top-of-mind issues for pubic relations today, most of it doesn't resemble public relations at all. Instead, a good amount of it smacks of the worst elements of digital marketing, direct response, and social media.

To punctuate the point, consider the definition of public relations as adopted during the First World Assembly of Public Relations Associations and the First World Forum of Public Relations in 1978.

Public relations is the art and science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organization leaders, and implementing planned programs of action which will serve both the organization’s and the public interest.

Compare it to a new unwritten definition that seems to be permeating the field today. When attempting to infuse those five monkey wrenches into the industry, we're left with something that feels lacking.

Public relations is the art and science of tracking pop culture and capitalizing on that data by writing marginalized link bait that will be seen by as many eyes as possible to boost site traffic where organizations can capture email addresses in order to spam the shit of those people while nurturing an individual reputation as a professional in order to boost klout scores and get perks until the day you write a business card book bought by colleagues who owe you for buying their business card books.

While there is nothing wrong with this, I suppose, one might wonder if the current changes sweeping the field are more akin to regression as opposed to evolution. How about you? Do you feel comfortable with the direction of public relations? Or maybe someone can come up with a more exact definition.

They Can Have Deen, Snowden, And Obama. I Prefer Freedom.

Independence Day in the United States commemorates the adoption of the Declaration Of Independence on July 4, 1776, when a handful of men and women announced their sovereignty as a nation. My favorite celebration to date was 1976. It's hard to beat the United States Bicentennial.

In the city of my youth (Milwaukee), celebrations were planned at every local park. Suspenders and Dixieland hats with a red, white and blue sash were optional. Ice cream came in plastic cups to be eaten with wooden spoons, sold by men on big three-wheel bicycles. The smell of grilled sausages and bratwursts lingered in the air. And it would remain that way until nightfall, when the sky would erupt with fireworks.

But there was something more than all that, the big bands, long parades, and holding tightly to quarters emblazoned with patriots. It might have felt like more because the price of freedom was still fresh in our minds as people were fighting for peace at home or for the nation halfway around the world. It all took a toll.

The country had some challenges ahead, but also felt young and unweathered. 

Two hundred years didn't seem like such a long time. As a country, we had barely finished crawling. If you asked anyone back then whether they would fight the American Revolution all over again, no had to wonder where a majority might fall. The spirit of the Declaration Of Independence was intact.

Our country still counted freedom and liberty among our greatest virtues. We all saw it as the lifeblood of everything — the probability that with education or opportunity or persistence, we could either land a job after graduation or start a computer company out of a garage, which someone incidentally did in 1976. Sometimes it was hard work to make it happen, but mostly the only people in our way was us.

Less than four decades later, it isn't so clear cut anymore. For all the virtues of a majority rule that has encroached on our fragile representative government, we adopted a notion that freedom is as simple as a choice. But freedom isn't a choice. It's about having choices. We haven't been making great ones.

The reason some of them aren't so great is simple enough. We're continually trading away freedom for security without appreciating the economics of it. Unlike supply and demand, the scales of freedom are stacked. It's the only thing in the world that is cheap to sell and expensive to buy. We've sold away too much of it, often times for promises that will never be delivered (and sometimes for something worse).

More than that, it seems the United States has grown too accustomed to the notion that we are somehow rotten as a people. And as a result, we must somehow feel forever in debt to this national guilt. The terms of payment are clear. Every year, we're asked to give a little more of our freedom and pay a little more for the dwindling amount of freedom that remains. The irony is that government administers the demand and collection of debt, even though it and not the people are responsible.

The quality of the choices we make today will dictate the quantity of choices we make tomorrow. 

A few people who have read this space for as long as I've been writing it recently asked me why I haven't covered the usual communication suspects that have surfaced in the news. Some of them figured it was related to my recovery, but that's not it. It's about my heart.

While my head still sees communication challenges and how this or that needs to be handled, my heart isn't into taking on the ugliness that holds our country hostage to guilt. There are better topics than this:

Deen. Her ignorance is more deserving of our pity than punishment. Worse, by continually reinforcing that various segments of our country have ties to racism is counterproductive as it casts all Americans with European heritage as racists and all Americans with an African heritage as victims. While it's convenient to think so in this fog of political guilt, 5 percent of the men who gave their lives at Bunker Hill were African-Americans. They were heroes not victims.

It seems to me if there is any debt to be paid on July 4, it ought to paid by honoring the thousands of African Americans who fought not alongside patriots but as patriots during the American Revolution. We might even start with Crispus Attucks, a hero of the Boston Massacre. Americans didn't care that Attucks was African American when he was shot. They only cared he was a colonist like them.

Snowden. His celebrity is the least important part of the story. Although it amazes me to some degree that political factions on the right and left can find common ground on what is being cast as a national security issue, the real story is the extent of arbitrary searches, seizures and the collection of data by the government. Both sides whittled away at the Fourth Amendment for more than 10 years.

While some Americans feel additional security is warranted, the cost is too high in terms of freedom and fiscal expense. It might be argued that short-term measures were reasonable during a state of war, but it also seems infinitely suspicious that any regime would call for a perpetual state of war readiness to justify a permanent invasion of privacy. The greater threat to public safety is that for every dollar the federal government collects to snoop, we have one less dollar for local public safety like firefighters.

Obama. Democracy voted to sequester national health care based on a "free" soundbite. George Washington once said that if freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we would be led like sheep to the slaughter. There is a similar fate for those who vote without making comprehension compulsory. As a nation of news snackers who prefer affirmation and popularity over objectivity and complexity, we don't always understand the depth of the issues we form opinions about.

People pick their sides. So writing about Obamacare spin on both sides seems futile to me, especially when more important topics are missed: what can we do to stop killing bees, why are genetically modified foods becoming more prevalent (avoid them), and how to fix the primary care physician shortage. Right. It's much easier to discuss guilt over soda size than topics that affect us.

Have fun in the name of freedom. And please change the subject. 

In 1976, the country wasn't perfect but what we wanted seemed pretty simple. We wanted a little elbow room to enjoy our definition of happiness and one day a year to appreciate the 2.5 million people (less 10-20 percent loyalists) who put their lives on the line for freedom (and everyone else afterward).

Many of our children may want something like that someday too. With the cost of education eclipsing the cost of a starting a small business, it's anybody's guess if they will. As for me, I'd rather think about heroes and how to help them — patriots (of every race), firefighters, doctors, and honey bees — than the topics served up by social and traditional media. Maybe you would like to help me change the subject too. The press can have Deen, Snowden and Obama. Good night and good luck. Have fun and be safe.

Three Mechanics For Stronger Multidimensional Writing

"The hardest thing in the world is the writing of straight, honest prose about human beings." — Ernest Hemingway 

Hemingway was almost right when he wrote it, but there are harder things a writer can do. He or she can try to write straight, honest prose to human beings while convincing someone else to foot the bill and leave well enough alone. 

But most clients aren't like that. They can't leave it alone.

It's not their fault, exactly. Somewhere along the way the communication industry became so miffed over how they might produce enough persuasive content to fill the infinite blankness of the Internet that they began to confuse "content creators" with "writers." They might share some similarities but they're not exactly interchangeable. 

One of them can burp out three pages of content in an hour for $25 and never lose a minute of sleep when their client insists on capitalizing titles like foreman and manager. The other one finds such style breaches akin to squeaky thumbscrews. The only thing worse has three letters. SEO. 

Sure, some writers have no choice but to acquiesce. It's either that or they'll come up short on the mortgage — something writers a few dozen decades ago wouldn't have cared less about. But that's another story. This story is about something else — it's about the hardest thing in the world.

The hardest thing in the world is teaching someone how to write straight, honest prose to human beings. Some writers insist it can't be done. Maybe they're right and I'm just a masochist. 

The reason most of them are skeptical is easy enough to understand. There is a fundamental difference between being able to write (create content) and being a writer. And generally, most people who call themselves writers can only write (and some of them don't write very well). They only think they can.

It's easy enough to see the difference even if the person can't see it themselves. The former can fill page after page of with one-dimensional prose, anything from a postage stamp-sized tweet to a business card book. The latter, on the other hand, captures a sometimes subconscious process of multidimensional thinking that is equally concerned with the mechanics of writing as much as the art of storytelling. 

What is this space? Most writers can't even articulate it, which is why great writers — people like Hemingway or Allen Ginsberg or William Saroyan — were always more inclined to tell aspiring writers that either you feel it or you don't. And if you don't feel it, they might insist you don't bother. 

I disagree with them a bit. As long as you care enough (and you have to care), you can capture that elusive feeling and learn how to write too. You can be a writer who never sees the job as a boring chore.

The mechanics of multidimensional writing. 

Outside of the storytelling, the mechanics of multidimensional writing primarily can be thought of as three considerations that occur seamlessly and simultaneously — mass, space time, and gravity. The terms weren't chosen by accident. They best describe three of layers I mapped out during a class. 

Great writers are concerned with the mass (format), space time (consistency and speed), and gravity (connectivity) of everything they write at the same time. If you want to be a better writer, you will too. 

Mass. You can size up any writing assignment any way you want, but everyone eventually concludes that there is only a beginning, middle, and end. The genre doesn't even matter. Copywriters create advertisements. Journalists flesh out articles. Fiction writers craft chapters. All three want to capture people's attention up front, tell a story, and finish with a call to action or compulsion to read more.

Space Time. As odd as the term might seem applied to writing, space time fits especially well. Writers are concerned with the flow and consistency (condition of adhering together), the relative pace and speed that the reader takes in the content, and some writing essentials whether mine or something more eloquent. All of these qualities make reading the content worthwhile.

Gravity. While some writers (especially the greats) argue they only answer to themselves, it isn't exactly true. They still have to find a voice (organizational or personal), apply a style with suitable linguistic or industry standards, and consider the audience because we all speak and write differently to our mothers, fathers, wives, friends, colleagues, and children.

If you couldn't see the difference between writing and being a writer before, perhaps you can now. It takes a little more than gathering up a pretty pile of words and putting them in order. Real writers consider everything at once and then run back through every word, sentence, and paragraph afterward. 

You can tell when they don't. You can tell when I don't. But can you tell when you don't? It could be the best question you ask before you hit publish or send something to print. Every little bit of it counts.

This Too Shall Pass Unless It Doesn't

Six weeks isn't that long of a time. It's about 42 days, a cut above 1,000 hours. Online, it feels like forever. It's such a long time that I tell audiences they only need twice that amount to change the world.

Right. Ninety days was the ideal benchmark I created for Bloggers Unite when I coordinated some of its biggest campaigns. The biggest with Amnesty International changed American foreign policy in Darfur.

I still believe in a 90-day benchmark. As long as you have a base in place, it's the right amount of time to do a campaign without feeling like the task is insurmountable or the outcome too far out. The same can be said for personal goals too. You can rock out a lot in 90 days. I'm around 45 right now.

The two most critical moments for anything: the start time and halftime.

If I stopped today, I would feel pretty miserable. Six weeks only covered the recovery period after my surgery to move from the cancer column to the cancer-free column. The next six weeks matter more.

As careful as I was (and I was careful), I put on an inch or two around my waistline after surgery and lost more definition than expected. It's the price paid for having a forced semi-sedentary lifestyle. I was given explicit orders not to lift anything over ten pounds, be mindful of twists, and no vacuuming.

If I took a snapshot today, most people wouldn't notice unless I had my shirt off. If I did have my shirt off, they might make some pretty crazy assumptions. Specifically, they might think I'm out of shape (me too). But they would also be wrong given a bigger context.

This is what Chris Brogan was driving at as a topic in May. You can find it again in another piece by Geoff Livingston. I've written about it before, talking about how people need to be the verb, not the noun.

My condition is temporal. In six more weeks, I'll be in a different place. These six are all about starting at half my exercise set weight and gradually increasing the amount until I am eventually back or better than pre-surgery. The first two sessions went well, even if I was tired after both.

The next one will be the bigger tell, as it directly includes abdominal muscles. Steady as she goes.

That isn't all there is to it, of course. I'm mindful of my diet and try to find time to walk (as it was the only recovery I was approved to do prior). I make sure I get enough rest. I try not to overdo things.

But the point is pretty simple. A snapshot forces permanence on things that are otherwise ephemeral.

People are easily hung up on snapshots. It's motion that matters.


As individuals or en masse in social media, most people see snapshots as permanent, which is the primary link between my article on the potential failings of isolated big data and the Livingston expose on mean tweets. It proves effective for this article too because ephemerality makes everyone wrong over time.

What most people don't know about any crisis event is that it only represents a moment in time when everyone agrees something bad has already happened. Everything from that point on is malleable.

Barring criminal charges and other liabilities, business executives have a choice to turn things around or close the doors. A personal crisis isn't much different: the crisis event is the moment you realize your company is in decline, your marriage in on the rocks, or your physical condition puts you at a health risk. Any or all of those things might feel like the end of the world. But they aren't, unless you're dead.

The realization is simply your cue to make your next move. You have a choice to do nothing (which is stasis, akin to losing ground at a pace too slow to notice until it's too late), give up (accelerate the bad), or reverse direction and mediate the challenge (have a plan to make things better). There are no other options, no matter how loud any spectators might become.

Right. The loudness of it all doesn't matter nearly as much as people think. Any negative sentiment is more akin to a symptom. Any closure is more likely to link to the disease — bad practices, bad ideas, or bad reactions. And that's why social media and isolated big data based on social media aren't accurate predictors. It's like a poll. It can show you a plot point in the near past, but the future is still wide open.

In other words, the reality of it reads much more like the title. This too shall pass unless it doesn't. Or, as I wrote several weeks ago: when bad things happen, there is very little you can do except find solace in the storm. You find your peace. You let it happen. But once the bad is done, you look for potential.

You make a plan. You press ahead with a positive trajectory. And as long as you set that plan in motion and then double check yourself at halftime, it's nearly impossible to become stuck in the moment or sliding backward. Today, I'm about 45 days better than I was the day I left the hospital and my momentum suggests than every day will be better ahead. How about you? What's your direction?

Big Data Will Be The Blind Spot For Marketers

It's almost frightful how big big data will get. It's valuation is expected to reach $47 billion by 2017. It seems to me that estimate is too soft. Big data is like a boom town. I don't mean that figuratively.

The $4 billion Utah Data Center will eventually turn Bluffdale, Utah, and surrounding communities into boom towns. It's not the only place it will happen either. Government isn't the only player in big data.

Everybody wants an inside scoop on how individuals, groups, and mass populations operate for predictive and manipulative reasons. They want to uncover the non-existent philosopher's stone of human behavior so they can tell when someone who scratches their nose has malicious intent. They want to guess the direction of the public like they might plot the expected path of migrating geese. And they, marketers in particular, want to know which 140-character combination will not only get attention but also drive sales or, at least, pick up a follower that might buy a product within the next 100 tweets.

Some people will read that paragraph and feel spooked out. Some people will read it and salivate. It seems to me either might be an overreaction, but sometimes it's hard to tell. What is easy to tell is that big data will eventually lead to more blind spots than spoilers.

Analysts are too busy tracking online activity without concrete outcomes. 

Part of the problem, especially for marketers, is that they measure the wrong information. Forrester, ISTMA, and VisionEdge Marketing recently conducted a study that demonstrated precisely that.

What they found was that marketing performance management is operationally proficient but strategically stalled. The problem is exactly what you might think it is. Marketers are measuring marketing activity and not business outcomes, message effectiveness or predictive insights.

What does that mean? Marketers are too busy trying to prove performance to justify their efforts. They point to CRM and marketing automation to create dashboard reports that show how many people visited, shared and traveled down the sales funnel. They make decisions based on those measures too, and most of them revolve around the numbers they think matter, tying it to things like platform popularity.

It's not enough and I'm not the only one saying it. According to the analysts, only nine percent of CEOs and six percent of CFOs rely on marketing data to make decisions. In other words, most marketers have online clout and not the real stuff.

Big data will be rendered useless unless marketers measure on multiple levels. 

Less face facts. Although online sentiment can be useful, it's doesn't tell the whole story no matter how much money you throw at it. If it did, BP would not have survived the Gulf oil spill. If it did, JC Penney wouldn't be desperate after being right. In both cases, big data was off the mark.

Data needs to happen across every public, not just the public. Data needs to be discovered with multiple methods, not just one method. Even some of the most visible social media crisis events have been largely forgotten. Others were online loud, but many people never heard they happened.

You might find something different when you talk with people as opposed to react with them.

• Interviews. With the right interviewer, nothing beats a series of interviews. It's how some of our major clients have tapped my firm to write white papers. They work in other ways too. Once I interviewed 40 employees at a company that believed nobody saw the company like they did. I found out that they all saw the company the same way despite that belief.

• Focus Groups. Brainstorming sessions and focus groups made up of trusted stakeholders or select demographics can transform reaction captures into think tanks. For example, when I conduct core and strategic sessions, the first 50 responses are often the least important. Once a group hits closer to 100, they start thinking about vision instead of what's expected.

• Vetted Surveys. Instead of self-selected surveys, sometimes slanted with leading questions, try objective surveys (and control groups) with people who are solicited based upon belonging to a specific public or stakeholder group. Find out what they think of an organization, industry, and what's missing from the equation — not only what they expect but what they never thought to expect.

• Big Data. As I mentioned before, big data has a place. Just remember that sometimes you have to distinguish between the public and customers. One example that comes to mind was the initial launch of the iPhone without physical buttons. The quieter majority of customers didn't care. They didn't seem to care that the USB port was left off their iPads either. Never-customers cared much more.

After you're done, don't forget that inside out is just as important as what's being said outside.

• Employees. No matter how great you think your organizational brand might be, it isn't all that if your employees don't believe it and protect it. Most social media crisis events happen because one employee forgets just how important every branded piece of communication can be.

• Stakeholders. When working with the National Emergency Number Association (9-1-1), I was privy to some very intelligent ideas on improving emergency communication because the association's stakeholders included several dozen thought-leadership companies that had glimpses of future tech. Do you need another reason to talk to vendors, partners, shareholders, etc.?

• Customers. There is plenty that can be tracked when it comes to customers and there is much more to consider than a single click. The value of the lifetime customer is more. It's one of the reasons most major companies jumped at affiliate programs. Their marketing jumps in after one buy.

• The Public. Looking at the public makes sense, but with obvious limitations. Listening to the public en masse can sometimes be a good thing because it often serves as a commonsense barometer. Other times, it isn't nearly as good because it can be manipulated by catfish or implied wrongdoing.

Doing all this work takes more time, which means you can't turn on a dime with every decision. But then again, if an organization could turn on a dime then its brand relationship must be pretty thin. Or maybe the better way to say it is: isn't it commonsense to talk to people if you want to understand them?

Being A Big Fish In A Small Pond Works Until The Drought

Say what you will about statistics that claim people have as many as seven careers in a lifetime. I've seen studies that claim anything from five to 11, and wonder what might skew them.

The most common explanations offered up by researchers and reporters — job hoppers, immigrants, and young people — don't account for everything. The simplest answer is job evolution. A worker might make the move to management, opening up new career opportunities. Another employee might be moved from one department to another as a means of keeping them. An expert in one field might retire.

There are dozens of different reasons, but all of it points to one thing. The metaphor about becoming the biggest fish in the pond is rather pointless. It's a myth perpetrated by motivational coaches, training instructors and academics because they are in the business of selling skill sets that suggest expertise.

Careers don't work like they did in the 1950s. The job market has evolved.

The biggest fish in the smallest pond analogy only worked under the most pretentious and restrictive notion of the American dream that led people out into the suburban sprawl. The general concept was pretty clear cut. You graduated from high school, earned a degree for a career, accepted an entry level job, and then stuck with it until somebody promoted you to management, which eventually led to your retirement with a pension and gold watch. My stepdad had one of those dinosaur jobs, sort of.

After escaping foundry work for the airlines industry during its heyday before deregulation, he worked in telephone reservations before transferring to become a passenger services agent, a job track that lasted 40 years through no less than four or five buyouts and mergers while avoiding management.

Why did he turn avoid management? Managers didn't survive mergers. He preferred job security.

The chances of finding a one-track career job like he did (and being happy if not content doing the same thing like he was) is pretty slim. Most of his friends couldn't do it either. They all moved on.

Even if they could do it, there were no guarantees. Careers vanish all the time. Big fish travel agents, postmen, and meter readers have been watching their ponds shrink for some time. Architects, journalists, and visual artists like photographers and videographers are all struggling in the short term.

You can't always count on job trends either. Health care administration is hot right now, but it's anybody's guess what might happen after the aging population doesn't have a bubble. Government jobs remain hot despite the latest rounds of layoffs caused by tax shortfalls, but its growth is not sustainable. Anything in alternative energy has a ton of buzz, but the field is surprisingly erratic given its diversity.

The communication industry as a whole is in kind of a system shock too. Social media might have been exciting for some people, but it has left several disciplines in a state of confusion. Convergence has left people wondering whether public relations, advertising, marketing, social media, etc. are the best tracks to enter the industry. Most of them are disappointed to hear the truth. Almost none of them, exclusively.

In a world with unpredictable rain, it pays to be an amphibian. 

The modern market requires a different kind of thinking, even if human resources and headhunters have been equally slow to embrace the obvious. There are no degrees that are a waste of time. All of them provide skill sets that overlap, provided the student or working professional can enhance them.

The objective isn't to become a specialist anymore. And I'm not suggesting you become a generalist either. The answer lies somewhere in the middle, where you can weave together adaptive skill sets.

Once you have a foundation, through education or experience, look toward enhancing parallel skill sets as they become obvious. This has been the cornerstone of my career course over nearly three decades and it places me in an interesting position if I call recent events an intermission between acts.

The interwoven disciplines of advertising, business, journalism, and psychology have opened up any number of opportunities. Some only require a nudge if I was inclined to make a course correction.

As a stakeholder in several businesses, I have roles ranging from product development to executive management. As a communicator, I have experience as a strategic planner, creative director, journalist, copywriter, author, and some undeveloped talent in design. As an instructor, I could take a turn toward education and write instructional books. Or, if I wanted to, I could always dial back to pick up two classes for a degree in psychology (which has its own growing niche in business modeling). And there are several other skill sets, ranging from hobbies to oddities, that I won't bore you with.

I'm hardly the only one. Chan Luu managed her clothing boutique before becoming a fashion designer. Paul Gauguin was a stockbroker before becoming an artist. Charles Bukowski worked as a postman. Leonardo daVinci was an artist turned scientist, engineer and inventor. Benjamin Franklin was an author, printer, politician, and scientist (among many other things). Most founding fathers had woven careers.

The truth is that until the 1950s, multiple careers were more common than unusual. You almost have to dial back to the dark ages to find lifelong careers or family trades being prized as a profession. And in America, the concept was exceptionally foreign. Most people left Europe to escape the class system.

In fact, until suburbia entered the picture, few people wanted to be stuck with such a low glass ceiling. And nobody really wanted to make it worse with a dramatically tiered tax system either or mandatory social services based on the assumption that they would never make enough to pay for it. That came later, along with the big fish concept that suggested people find smaller and smaller ponds to feel important.

Make no mistake about it. If you recently graduated, your education has only started. Your goal isn't to become indispensable — the proverbial big fish in a small pond. Your goal is to become adaptable — the fish that can walk to the next closest body of water anytime the pool there feels a bit shallow.

The only way to do it is to create a braided career that includes one or two major areas of practice and several closely related minor skill sets that can become areas of practice on relatively short notice. Along with those skills, it also helps to learn something about the stock market. The 401 (k) is not enough to rely on for retirement like pension plans several decades ago.

Put People Ahead Of Platforms If You Want To Succeed

Modern online marketers fascinate me. They always say they want to connect with people online, but most of them are ultimately obsessed with platforms. They want to know which social network is popular, which platform is the most active, which network will deliver more referral traffic, how to make headlines buzz, and when to post content so the most eyeballs see it. So on and so forth.

I think you get the idea. They talk a good game about relationships, but funnel most of their energy into gaming the relationship, everything from search engine optimization (including competitor names and misspellings) to misleading headlines that don't deliver on the content they promise. It's all silly stuff.

There are no silver bullets. People are social nomads. 

It really is silly stuff, but don't dismiss it all outright. Those tips and tactics can be useful, provided you don't become too comfortable with last year's data or this year's predictions. Social media is the never ending story taking place in an always changing environment. The only certainty so far is nothing.

Examples abound. If you believe Facebook will always be the most popular place to connect, that Google+ is where tech savvy guys hang out, or that sales only happen after site visits, then you might be making the same mistake that people made when they thought Tumblr was a waste of time, Quora would be the next big social network (or down for the count), or that any service is too big or popular to shutter. Betting the farm on any one of those statements is akin to picking a single series for a media buy and assuming that it will never be shuttered.

Just as every television series on the planet will eventually vanish, networks will eventually vanish too. One of my favorite examples is par for the course as the case was made: Bumpzee will be the next Digg. The prediction was almost right, but in the opposite direction. Neither really exist (and many new social media experts haven't even heard of them). Nobody wants to save Delicious anymore either.

In fact, all this is why I've always found the tribes concept misleading. It wasn't because Seth Godin was wrong. He was mostly right, but without an emphasis on the idea that tribes are as temporal as communication. Modern humans do fall into them. But they fall out of them just as fast.

The ones you belonged to in high school aren't the the ones you belong to today. The ones you belong to today aren't the ones that you'll belong to in the future. They are tied to platforms, technologies, jobs, and marriages, and all sorts of other things that feel permanent in our lives but are not nearly so permanent.

Five areas of focus that will make you more people centric instead of platform reliant over the long term. 

Sure, people make up social networks and social networks can help you reach those people who have already pitched a tent. But that doesn't make the platforms more important than the people. Even inside most networks, any given community, page, or group can be completely different from another. The company needs to create it.

• Know what you are talking about. It doesn't matter what industry you work in or for. You need to know as much about it as you do marketing, advertising or social media. Even if you will never know more about it than the industry leaders (a few analysts come close), you need to know enough to have an intelligent conversation with anyone who asks.

Most people writing content don't know nearly as much as they need to, which is probably why only 37 percent of marketers would call their Facebook efforts successful when surveyed (they all say they're successful in person). You see, anyone can drop a discount, network quip or announce an event. But it takes someone who knows something to engage and keep them interested.

• Know the people you want to reach. If you have never spent time with customers and prospects (and make note of any differences between them), then you might not reach them anyway. Industry leaders and executives struggle with this as much as social media and marketing managers. They can tell you the demographics of their target audience, but few take the time to really get to know them.

Big data is great, but old school copywriters know that the secret ingredient inside all content has to do with understanding the customers as people and often visualizing a real person when they write to them. You have to get to know them. Shake their hands. Put yourself in their shoes. And then ask yourself how your social network messages look from their perspective.

• Make adjustments for platform constraints. With the exception of understanding the constraints that come with every platform, there isn't much more you need to know about them. It's more important to tie messages to the mission, vision and values more than the best practices of a social network. After all, best practices are almost never invented by anyone who follows them.

The better way to think about it is to craft a message and then see how it fits within a platform, much in the same way campaigns were made across radio, print and television. As long as it is strong and doesn't break any constraints, customers and prospects will not only find it but give it resonance. One step better than someone liking or sharing, resonance means they will remember it a week from now.

• Be interesting and enthusiastic about the topic. When I speak to students, I can never stress it enough. If you think the topic is boring, it will show up in the writing. There is nothing you can do about it. All the superlatives and exclamation points in the world won't save you. Those make it worse.

The most common excuse they offer up is that their clients, employers or bosses dictate the content thread. But I don't completely buy it. Putting in a little extra effort to show someone why something else might be superior can make all the difference.

• Know how much to say and when to shut up. I said something similar for marketers two weeks ago, but this advice is specific to social networks. The difference between a consumer seeing content value or spam is only one post, share or email too many.

Remind yourself and your employers that no one needs to be the center of attention all the time, unless the public wants to make something the center of attention. Give your messages, ideas and concepts some room to live before blasting away with the next. Instead of making conversations read like a group of people taking turns at a single microphone, nurture something that looks like community conversations.

While those five tips aren't even close to everything you need to know about social networks, they do represent a different direction than what has become the standard fare. Stop worrying about which social networks and start thinking about what will make people seek you out no matter the network.

Success Always Starts With Permission To Act On Big Dreams

Although Michael Port will be among the first to tell you that a client's urgent needs almost always overshadow long-term goals, Book Yourself Solid Illustrated is an exercise in the opposite direction. He asks people who want to succeed to put aside their immediate needs and focus in on big dreams.

He's smart to do it too. For the better part of 20 years, I've seen a relatively consistent and reoccurring life cycle among successful startups. Many take a year or two to establish themselves, make huge gains during the next few, and then slowly wind down until they eventually die.

It's painful to watch, especially because companies that can succeed during the first year or so experience something that those who don't try can only wonder about. Much like their success, their original mission and vision were tied to big dreams.

It makes sense that they would be. A startup is nothing less than someone taking a shot to shine. It doesn't even matter what kind of business it might be. Most cite big dreams as a common ground.

The bulk of them were started by people who wanted to do one of two things. Either they wanted to launch a new product, service or outlet that they are passionate about or they want to launch a business as an extension of their career by being their own boss. And contrary to popular myth, the majority of them will succeed (for a while).

The U.S. Small Business Administration estimates that seven out of ten business will succeed in the first two years before something unexpected happens. Only half them will survive a full five years.

Why do businesses that succeed in the first two years fail in the following three years? 

While there are many reasons that successful startups fail, almost all include a change in mindset. As business owners succeed, they are more likely to give up on big dreams and focus on urgent needs.

In other words, they give up on the very dreams that make them successful and start focusing on what they think they need with the operative word being "more": more revenue, more profits, more clients, more customers, more high profile accounts, more website visitors, more followers, more whatever.

As soon as "more" becomes the objective, these businesses start to shrink or sink as they take on the wrong kinds of customers or clients: those that take advantage of them (e.g., empty promises and slow payments), drain the life out of them (create frustration and negative relationships), or demand products and services that have little to do with the vision (diminish resources and reduce quality).

As the pressure mounts to maintain sales, problems materialize. Some owners might borrow to meet payroll while floating account debts. Others might waste time working for customers who will never be happy or refer any business. Some will substitute quality materials to push prices lower. Others will expand their offerings to appease an ever-increasing audience while watering down their uniqueness.

Worse, many successful startups won't see the root problem as they struggle to preserve these short-term gains. The fact is that they are much more likely to compound the problems as they trade in their permission to dream for protectionism — the fear of losing any revenue is so strong that they will defend their most detrimental clients rather then lose them.

Book Yourself Solid is a handbook for disciplined dreamers.

Although originally intended for advisers, consultants and speakers, Port's Book Yourself Solid works well enough for other kinds of startups too. And while some of the tools he and I use are different, the advice reads the same. It takes discipline to succeed. You have to commit yourself to looking for the "right" clients instead of "more," even if that means giving up some short-term gains.

He even goes one step further, starting with something many business owners will find startling. You have to dump "dud" clients, those who wear you down and take you further away from your dreams. As soon as you do, you can use the newly found time to pursue the clients you've always dreamed of working with or do more for the stars who are already part of your roster.

At the same time, Port dares business owners to stop giving others permission to punish them and start giving themselves permission to act on their dreams. Stick to the dreams that made your business work for you. Avoid the objectives that make you work for your business.

Any number of examples illustrate the point. An art gallery doesn't have to sell cheap prints just because some people complain about the price of the originals. A respected restaurateur won't serve out-of-season fish on the whim of a customer who doesn't know better. A reputable consultant won't rely on email spam or purchase back links to inflate junk traffic.

Instead, Port says it's much more important to be true to what you do than try to be true to what everybody wants you to you do. There are other people who might try to be all things to all people, but you don't have to follow their lead. If you really are a leader in the field, then not everyone is your customer. You know it. Your customers know it. And Port knows it too.

This may have even been one of the reasons that Port decided to make his system a little more manageable on his recently refreshed release. He teamed with Jocelyn Wallace to illustrate Book Yourself Solid. Although it is still hyped as the fastest, easiest and most reliable system for getting more clients than you can handle (even if you hate marketing and selling), there is something in this re-engineered book that will work for more businesses and independent consultants.

Whether you are starting a business, need to revisit and retrofit your vision or have recently noticed that you don't love your business anymore, Port provides enough tools to put you back on track. Perhaps more than anything else, he provides a series of exercises that are designed to remind business owners to stop chasing the daily chaff and start giving themselves permission to act on big dreams again.

So how do you know if you might need this kind of help? While I believe every business can benefit from an organization-defining communication plan, most people can start with two simple questions.

Has your happiness or employee morale faltered from the day you first started? And if so, are the challenges you face related to what you wanted to do, what you actually do, how you have to do it, or who you do it for? You might be surprised by the answers. And I'd love to know what you find.

Five Things I Wish Every Advertiser, Marketer, And PR Pro Knew

A few weeks ago, one of my recent students asked me if there is anything I wish I had taught but never got around to teaching. I thought the question was pretty funny. I told her I had ten years of material.

In truth, ten years of material is a pretty conservative estimate but not because of the quantity. The way I see it, there is never any shortage of material as long as the instructor continues to explore, learn and grow. Ideally, they will with one foot in academics and one in the real world but sometimes one or the other will suffice. No one ever wants to feel dusty or complacent unless they've given up.

Eventually, I settled on five things I wish every advertiser, marketer and PR pro knew because I think all of us, at one time or another, grows weary of watching people fail. That's the way marketing works. You can put in hard work or learn the hard way.

• A Content Strategy Is Not A Marketing Strategy. As content marketing has become a dominant digital marketing tactic, more businesses want to create elaborate content processes, build massive audiences, and become perceived as industry experts. But sometimes you have to ask to what end.

Dial back the meaning of a marketing strategy a few years ago and you might find a creative team tasked with expanding the dandruff shampoo market among men. You might remember how they did it too. The original advertisements showed men in dark suits with their shoulders dusted with flakes, creating a compelling reason to look for the problem and find a solution. Head & Shoulders.

• Breaking Through The Clutter Means More Than A Clever Message. Everywhere you look, marketers want to convince clients that brand visibility, original communication, and writing tips are all they need to succeed. But sometimes marketing means innovation at the product and service development level.

If you operate a lemonade stand on a block with five more lemonade stands, sometimes you have to stop pushing the pink and break open a box of sugar cookies. That is how Federal Express got its start. It started as a small Memphis-based package handler that won with the promise of delivering parcels overnight. So while everybody else talked a good game, they went out and did something.

• Following The Leader Will Make You A Follower. There are plenty of reasons that marketers and advertisers are always looking for best practices, case studies and trends to follow. Sometimes people are looking for new ideas. There is nothing wrong with that. But sometimes people waste time on easy.

If you have ever revisited the book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies, you know what I mean. It used to be one of my favorite books. There are still some good ideas inside, many of those business aren't considered the best run companies anymore. While everyone was busy trying to follow their lead, someone else invented better operations and opened new markets.

• It's Not Who You Know, But Who Wants To Know You. Given some estimates attribute 60-80 percent of job placements to personal relationships, one might assume that the old adage that who you know really is more important than what you know. But that's not entirely true.

The key word in the compound phrase "personal relationships" is "personal" and not "relationships," which suggests the size of the network is less important than the depth of the connection. People who boast about being connected or treat their network like a commodity almost never come through. It's the people who don't talk about who they know that are more likely to surprise you.

• Stating The Obvious Is One Step From Redundant. Everybody loves to talk about elevator speeches and how to fix them. That might be reason enough to toss your elevator speech out the window. You can say something a million times and even lace all those SEO links with all the right terms, but so what?

Every time you introduce yourself as a noun, the person you're speaking to asks themselves if they need one. Do I need a plumber? Do I need a social media expert? Do I need an advertising agency? Maybe it would be more worthwhile to conjure up a different question inside their heads. Or, better yet, keep your mouth shut and let them tell you what they need.

Incidentally, Michael Port recently reinforced this last point in his book Book Yourself Solid Illustrated. He sent me a digital version a few weeks ago, but I felt it was too weird to publish my review while I was being swept away by life. The review is mostly written. I'll probably add it next week unless someone wants me to write about something else. Maybe I'll have time to make a new masthead too.

22 Staples And The State Of Two Internets

The first thing I saw when I woke in the recovery room were the curtains drawn around my bed. They were pale blue, I think. But I can't be certain because that memory is fleeting and already fading.

I only saw them for a few seconds before someone started to guide me out of the haze created by an anesthetic cocktail. It was one of two cocktails that the anesthesiologist let me call a few hours before.

"What's your favorite cocktail?" he asked.

"My favorite safe drink is gin and tonic," I said, because I wanted to be safe.

"That's what this is," he smiled, tapping the syringe. "Gin and tonic. Safe and good. I'll keep you safe."

There aren't any memories as much as fragments after that. I've sorted a couple that make me smile, but most begin in the recovery room. Someone started to ask me questions. She asked me the easy ones first and then worked up to something complex. It's a test to make sure my cognitive functions rebooted.

But I didn't want a test as much as a conversation. So I started asking her questions instead. I wanted to know how was her day was going, how long had she worked there, and why she chose medicine.

They were easy questions, but we eventually worked up to something complex. She was especially interested in my case because the chart made note of this surgery starting with an incidental finding. They found my cancer by accident.

Her husband wasn't so fortunate. His cancer wasn't discovered until he had blood in his urine. He was diagnosed with irreversible bladder cancer. The funeral was a few months ago, and it had deepened her resolve to help people.

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said, consoling her and asking more questions.

"Look at you, worried about me," she smiled. "It was meant to be, you know. It was meant to be that they found yours early."

It wasn't the first time nor was it the last that I would hear those words during my expedited hospital stay. I was scheduled for three nights. I only stayed one. And yet, within those 48 hours when you reflect on and remeasure life, some things make immediate sense like the duality of social connections.

There are two Internets, which is why marketers can't reconcile the space. 

In case you haven't noticed, there are two Internets. There is the one my friend Geoff Livingston wrote about yesterday, with marketers seeing the totality of social media like a very big fish pond and the goal to catch as much fish as possible. Hook, reel, and release. Some companies have teams that do it daily.

Most of them aren't even good fishermen because the only strategy they've come up with to catch more fish is to put out more bait. There is already so much of it floating in the water, untouched, it's a wonder anyone can breathe. And still they add more, daily. It has become so dense that it smacks of pollution.

I was nowhere near it in the first few hours of recovery. I was on the other Internet, which is the one that kept me breathing. I didn't see all the clutter because content surrenders to a shared experience.

Since my wife and I have two children, she couldn't stay in the hospital full time like many people recommended. So I sometimes turned to blog comments and social networks to read and reread the words left by family, friends, and colleagues. Their good thoughts, well wishes, and prayers gave me some added strength while I recovered. I can't thank them enough. Every one of them mattered.

Of course, I didn't just read the words they left for me. I read everything else they shared too. And even though my loosely connected groups of family and friends could be delineated by degree of relation, proximity, or whether we've met in person, not one of them looked like fish nor did any of them ask for bait. This was the Internet where every connection was important and every message mutual.

The intimacy is unmistakeable. The relationships are as real as the one forged between myself and the nurse in the recovery room (and many others along the way). We never met each other before that moment and may never meet again, but we made a connection without any coercion, conjecture, or content creation. By the end of it, I made several more connections too. We went through all of it together, something that even the best connection round ups forget.

Maybe those staples will come out this week, all 22 of them. 

Sometimes we're fortunate and find miracles in faith and modern medicine. While there is plenty more to be done, from my follow up and pending pathology to my recovery schedule and post-recovery rebuild strategy, I feel remarkably blessed to be sitting at my desktop writing something, anything. A week ago, even under the most optimistic scenario, no one could imagine an outcome this good.

Sure, there is some pain here and there and I do get tired as the day presses on, but such challenges seem like nothing compared to those in the first few hours of recovery. It was only a few days ago, my major goals were the kind we all take for granted — breathe without oxygen, drink water without issues, get out of bed with assistance. Nowadays, I'm more likely thinking about work, play, and life changes.

As I alluded to last week, I might be blessed with more time but there is none to waste. There are plans to be made and the more plans the better. But at the same time, I never want to lose sight of the fact that everyone has a journey too. They are all equally grand and challenging, hilarious and heartbreaking.

If you want to change the world you see, you have to start by changing the way you see it. Life is meant to be a shared experience because when we discover more about the people who cross our paths then our own experiences are enriched by them. In other words, my hospital stay is less significant than the hospital experience I took away with a few interesting and inspiring doctors, nurses, and medical technicians. This is how life works.

Online or offline, it hardly matters. But in sticking to the headline thread, suffice to say that this is the side of the Internet where I'd like to invest more time. The state of it is great. It feels good to be back. Nice to meet you, again. How great it would be to catch a movie this weekend. It's a little too soon, maybe.

Killing Me Softly: Cancer

I have said it in a dozen different ways before, but I have never said it more plainly. The quantity of time we have is not as important as the quality. Write it down somewhere and tape it to your computer.

We always want for more of it. We rarely use it wisely. And most of us sell it for far too cheap.

For the last few months, I haven't been writing in this space as much. It was a decision I made back in February before I knew it in my head even if I already knew it in my heart. The incidental finding on a CT scan wasn't just a spot on my kidney. It was a mass. It was malignant. And I'm grateful, not regretful.

The remedy is straightforward. I start pre-op tomorrow and the surgery is on Friday. It won't be fun, but I'll find some fun in it anyway. The survival rate for radical nephrectomy is especially good. In terms of cancer, they say, it's the absolute best one to get. It's almost like hitting a jackpot. What does that mean?

There won't be any chemotherapy or radiation. The whole of it rides on one operation, and then a lifelong commitment to a different (but not debilitating) lifestyle with semi-regular followups, blood work, and scans to make sure there isn't any more of it lurking around somewhere. So seize the day.

The past 90 days have been fun. Thanks for sticking around. 

I really give a lot of credit to people like Leslie Lehrman and her daughter Jennifer Windrum. They saw cancer as a catalyst for something bigger. It takes real courage to do something like that. And I've met a lot of people who see it as a calling of sorts. We need more people like them. Cancer needs a cure.

I took a different path, more along the lines of Hazel Grace Lancaster in The Fault In Our Stars after her transformation. I lived a little more, only alluding to or mentioning surgery as necessary. It was the only way I could work, live, and play without it overtaking my life. I even pushed the surgery out enough so my family could keep our vacation, my students could keep their instructor, and clients and service commitments might have a few more hours of time. My wife hated the idea, but it's who I am.

I quit smoking (before the prognosis, ironically), worked out more, finished some home improvement projects, baked some desserts, made new friends, reached out to old ones, discovered some inspired talents, worked with amazing people across several dozen companies and nonprofits, pressed forward with plans to start a new agency with three other partners, promoted other people's causes and efforts, funded some ideas via Kickstarter, supported education by donating to schools, re-discovered some latent artistic talent, made a sketch at The Getty, stood by as my son received another star for his black belt, saw my daughter baptized because she wanted to be, and wrote fiction for the first time in years. As the log ride caption read on Instagram: This is life, baby.

Sure, there were a few disappointments too. My doctors wouldn't clear me for the Spartan Race so close to surgery. One promising prospect green lighted and then retracted a proposal because someone sold them snake oil, wasting several days of precious time. And occasionally, despite my best intent, the gravity of the circumstances sometimes made me too impatient for those closest to me. I'm sorry.

The next 90 days will be even better. Expect to see changes sometime soon. 

If those last 90 days had taught me anything, it was how working on the wrong accounts truly dragged me down last year. I wasn't always happy with some of the work, even if I was good at it nonetheless.

I had learned the lesson before, but obviously needed to learn it again. There won't be a next time. Beginning with my recovery, expect to see some changes in this space. Time is just to too short to be stuck in one niche for too long.

I really wish I could tell you some specifics, but none of the paragraphs felt right so I took them all  down. Let's save it all for a post-surgery conversation. And if we never have the chance to have one? Then the best way to think about everything is to reflect on a comment I wrote for a friend of mine.

When bad things happen, there is very little you can do except find solace in the storm. And in finding it, hold those close to you a little tighter, even if it is just for a little while. The importance of such things are not measured in minutes but by magnitude. Good night and good luck. It has been my pleasure.