Alex Shippee

If you thumb through Twitter profiles long enough, you'd be amazed how many people identify themselves as, "Internet Marketing Gurus," "Best Selling Authors," and "Social Media Experts." I don't doubt that most of these are true from a certain perspective, but as Ryan Holiday wrote, "There are hundreds of these hollow shells whose meaning has fallen away while the demand for their association has risen dramatically. We need them badly."

One of my favorite books is Dante's "Inferno", for a lot of reasons. After Dante-the-Character treks all the way past the greedy, the thieves, the angry, and the tyrants, he reaches the single most corrupting thing you can do short of actively betraying someone: falsifying words. Diluting the truth. Lying. How can that possibly be worse than stealing or being violent?

Because the communities we all live in depend on bonds of credibility and trust. When somebody gets angry and shouts at you, you react to the aggressive disturbance immediately. You know what hit you and you can identify it, respond to it, and then move on.

But when somebody puts on a charming front, ensnaring your trust, it can take a lot of stress and heartache before you see reality. Lifeless weeks can drag on while you wonder where the time has gone.

I don't know why it bothers me so much. Maybe it's because I've been struggling to meet my own standards for so long. Friends of mine - who are better writers than I am - tell me about things they've submitted to various publications. Sometimes they've been accepted, sometimes not. All I know is is that I don't have anything that's up to their level yet. And that's fine. I'm in no rush to become a "published writer" because I know the mere act of publishing something doesn't make you a professional at it.

By the same token, anointing yourself as an "Internet Marketing Guru" doesn't make it so. It falsely broadcasts a level of expertise you don't have. If people don't see you as a fraud yet, they will when they realize you can't deliver results.

I had the chance to attend a pretty high class event the other week. A line of attendants waited patiently to take my orange ski-jacket, they served delicious food out of margarita glasses, and I got to hear a concert by someone I had only seen on television. It was made all the more absurd because I was invited at the last minute and was only dressed appropriately because I came from a meeting. Any other day, I would have been clad in jeans and a t-shirt. Instead, this one time, I fit the part of a young professional.

But the entire time, something was gnawing at the back of my mind. I couldn't remember what it was behind the glitz and glamor of the night.

Before I left work that day, I was a little depressed. I let myself get distracted when I was trying to read this article by Tim Ferriss and Tucker Max. Instead of reading it, I finished up work and went to that event. The thing is, that article is about something that's as true about internet marketing as it is about life: you can't fake quality. I let myself stop working just so I could go to a party and feel starstruck. If I read that article, I would have had a better handle on one of my projects.

There has been so much written about how best to use Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to drive traffic to your website, but at the end of the day it's all secondary. If you're not putting at least half of your efforts into producing quality content, then all your time spent marketing is just adding more noise to a seemingly bottomless pit of nonsense. That's how I feel thumbing through blogs some days, and that's how I felt at that event.

Just because I was let in the door and was dressed the part doesn't mean I was a part of that wealthy and accomplished crowd. Just because you can use "SEO" and "SMO" to get your blog in the best places doesn't mean it's worth reading. That's how I felt about my first few entries here, but I kept writing, even when I knew I wouldn't hit "Publish."

That's the important part, and not the glitz and glamor that only distracts you from the important, but harder tasks of producing and contributing.

Those are the things that don't leave you depressed and hungry for distractions. They're good enough by themselves.

I had a professor while at Marist that shared the unhealthy, manic lifestyle of his students. He'd come into class - over caffeinated and wearing a four day beard - and tell us about the essay he was trying to finish on a tight deadline. He was very easy to relate to, although it didn't hurt that he was one of the younger professors at 32. I remember one time, before our first test, he had a review session at about 8 P.M., at least twelve hours since he got to work. The inspiring part wasn't that he was still working - anybody can do that - but that he was still gushing energy and happiness to perform the most fundamental part of his job: teaching students.

When I think about the perfect leader, I usually come up with an image that one of my favorite writers, Robert Greene, would call the "Hustler King," a leader that is still in tune with the daily struggles of his enterprise. That proximity is the source of his strength. The person grading his students' papers, learning their ideas, is the professor; the person solving the client's problem, sharing their frustration, is the CEO; the person behind the camera, explaining to customers what went wrong, is not the PR people, it's the person who was responsible for the mistake.

At some point in time, every job gets delegated down to somebody else. Professors have TAs, CEOs have employees, and companies have PR firms. This is the typical way organizations develop and grow. It's average. It's normal. It works. But with that delegation comes an almost aristocratic distance. Being far away from your students, your customers, your clients, your audience...it robs you of that intimate knowledge that breeds real intuition. That's what I want for myself one day.

I see that professor as an example of a Hustler King, jubilant to still be helping his students learn at 8 o'clock at night. What other Hustler Kings are out there? Do you know any that inspire you?

When you're on Twitter everyday, it can seem like a very impersonal tool. I recently read this post titled "Learn From Your Friends To Make The Most of Twitter." He mentioned my company's Twitter, @tcgagency, but this was my favorite part:

"By now, there’s been plenty of blog posts written about the various ways to effectively use Twitter, so I’m not going to bother writing what they are. Instead, I wanted to give some “props” to the people who have helped me build my Twitter account and communication skills on the site. They exemplify what I feel to be the foundations of a successful Twitter profile: community, value, authenticity, and sharing."

This is a smart and very communal idea. Behind this, is something very similar to Follow Friday (#FF) - where users recommend people whose content they enjoy - but with more authenticity and expression. Anyone can tweet a few account names, but it takes more time and thought to write something about them. It's a gesture that shows you've been paying attention to someone and it makes for stronger bonds.

Twitter makes it easier than ever before to communicate with someone, but with that ease comes laziness. A lot of accounts will just tweet links to articles - it's amazing how many places you can get the latest from Mashable - without any indication that they read or even something away from them. These pusillanimous accounts are half way between nonsensical spam and users that really try to build relationships.

There's a good amount of talk about just how powerful bonds built over social media are. I think a good rule of thumb is that you're more likely to build a relationship if you feel like you behave and communicate similarly offline and if you take chances, even if you are a little shaky (fast forward to 12:42 where his company, that made a video amidst a PR crisis received playful, sociable responses). Because if you don't show people that you're human and trying to get involved in the conversation, than how are they going to find out?

I wrote a guest blog for one of my bosses a little while ago and you can find it here. Since then, I’ve been thinking about what I was trying to say and wanted to elaborate on it.

Social Media isn’t a place. You don’t really go to Facebook or Twitter or even this blog. You may navigate from one website to the other, but you’re really just sitting at your computer (or using your phone) and gaining access to a tool. If anything, the place is the tool.

People have been using different tools to reach an audience for thousands of years. If the average person, from any time period and place, was told to share a message with, say, twenty people, of course it’d be different. Somebody in Ancient Greece might travel to the nearest city-state and start talking to people. Somebody in Medieval Europe might post a bulletin in a public space hoping people will read it (providing they all could read). Somebody in America during the 19th century might send out fifteen telegraphs with the hope that a few people will share the message. Now, all somebody needs to do is send out one tweet.

The tools may be different, and Socrates and Martin Luther knew how to communicate their message given the conventions of the day, but there’s no substitute for genuine content and a relevant audience.