Welcome to episode #176 of Six Pixels Of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast. It’s not a great excuse, but business travel has kept the Podcast from being published – which (as you will hear) is a very lame excuse. Regardless, here is another episode of Media Hacks (it’s #19). It’s actually just a very personal conversation with Julien Smith about community, business, communication, business books and how to own your platform(s). Also, it’s Julien, so please note that some of the language is not work-safe (like every second word out of his mouth). Enjoy the conversation…
Here it is: Six Pixels Of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast – Episode #176 – Host: Mitch Joel.
- Running time: 54:58.
- Audio comment line – please send in a comment and add your voice to the audio community: +1 206-666-6056.
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- Six Pixels of Separation the book is now available.
- Media Hacks #19 features:
- Julien Smith – In Over Your Head – Co-author of Trust Agents.
- And those who did not make it this week:
- Chris Brogan – New Marketing Labs – Co-author of Trust Agents.
- C.C. Chapman – Managing The Gray – Advance Guard.
- Hugh McGuire – LibriVox – The Book Oven.
- Christopher S. Penn – The Financial Aid Podcast – Marketing Over Coffee.
- Where were we? What happened? Are we back?
- Did Robert Scoble miss us?
- The power of publishing with consistency.
- How do you build a platform and what it can do for you.
- Building community for when you need it… not building a community when you need it.
- How great companies at really building a community?
- The network is everything.
- The DNA of community building.
- You can’t buy community, but you sort of can…
- A side-tangent on The Cluetrain Manifesto (and stories of jetlag).
- What is techno-paganism? Not sure… but Julien knows.
- Lots of shilling of business books.
- AdLounge – Marketers Turned Authors.
- When The Comments And Links Go Dry.
- Blogging is your duty.
- 52 books a year is a lofty goal.
- The Internet is still about building hype.
- Bringing people up (and down) – the cycle of power.
- Why me? Why not me?
- Music from the Podsafe Music Network:
- New Leaf – ‘Magic Carpet’.
Please join the conversation by sending in questions, feedback and ways to improve Six Pixels Of Separation. Please let me know what you think or leave an audio comment at: +1 206-666-6056.
Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels Of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast – Episode #176 – Host: Mitch Joel.
Hi Mitch,
Just listened to episode #176/19. Excellent as always and I was missing your weekly conversation(s)! After the first week I checked my iTunes link to make sure it was not broken; the next week I went to you blog to see if anything was up. Since there was no information to the contrary I figured you must just be busy or had nothing to say (which is ok too ;-). It is kind of hard to complain about not getting my FREE content so I have just been waiting patiently and hoping!
Take – MH
This is my first time listening to your podcast. I guess the book (which I got this weekend) led me to the blog and then to the podcast. Not sure if that is a typical path but it was mine.
Anyway – really cool chat and useful as my wife is opening a new business in MTL next spring.
The big takeaway has been to start building community now and to do so in an unagressive, unobtrusive manner – just as an interested participant. When the business opens some groundwork will have already been laid. I found the discussion with Julien about how “it is best to start bldg now” (at around the 8-10 minute mark if memory serves) on this helpful.
First off, great conversation. I was wondering where you went for a few weeks. Nice to see Media Hacks back in my iTunes.
My comment is in the topic of blogs vs. books. At about the 28 minute mark Julien talked about the inspirational value and retention value of reading content in books vs. blogs. I’m paraphrasing here, but he said something like, “when you sit down to write a book you take it seriously….serious ideas go into books. [reading books] made me smarter.”
Obviously he was speaking to the value of books rather than slighting bloggers, but I’d like to bring up an idea that Clay Shirky talked about in his book “Here Comes Everybodyâ€?. The idea of filtering. Basically Shirky argues that people sometimes place a higher value on the printed form because the printed form has to pass through some external filters (i.e. book agents, publishers, editors, printers, etc.). We as readers apply some sort of additive value to the printed form with the logic being: if it made it through all those obstacles (or filters) then the content in a book must be worth reading.
Contrast that to blogging where anyone can publish anything at anytime. There are no filters other than our own BS detectors. We are on our own to determine the value of someone’s blog…unless you take into account number of readers, subscribers, retweets or comments. Still those aren’t authoritative voices. They don’t come from institutions like the publishing industry. So how much weight do those voices carry?
I think Julien would probably agree that serious ideas also go into blogs, but he brings up the question: Is the value of books over blogs that Julien articulated real or perceived? By that I mean, are books actually more authoritative because they contain better content (a byproduct of the filtering process) or do we only perceive them to be more authoritative than blogs as a result of the differences in publishing processes?
What about Guy Kawasaki’s book “Reality Check”? Wasn’t the whole thing more or less a collection of blog posts? How do books like that register on the spectrum?
Mitch,
I love the media hacks discussions, and I don’t know how you come up with your topic list, but I was interested in the groups take on foursquare.com. A friend introduced me to it a few days back and I found it to be a very interesting localized way to share information – like twitter with a GPS. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of things that are talked about on twitter that have no specific geographic relevance, but I think its an interesting approach to building a user fed information site.
Love to hear you take,
-Wayne
Getting caught on my SPOS Podcasts. Great show and yes we are listening. I just still don’t get where you guys get time to write books, write blogs, podcasts, and CLIENT work!? Way to go. Have a great day and thank you!
Steve
it’s funny to hear you guys often say i’m not sure if anyone’s listening. this was a quality discussion. i’m going to tune into more episodes now.