Finding Your Social Media Voice

I started talking to a friend the other day about this idea of “finding your voice”.  To many, it sounds like a fortune cookie, and doesn’t seem to make very much sense at all, and to others, there’s an instant resonance.  So to bridge this gap, let me explain what i mean by Finding Your Voice.

When I first started to write a book, I wrote episodically.  I’d write in long spurts, put the piece down, and come back days later, maybe adding some, maybe starting over.  When I reread the pieces to edit them together, it became apparent I had a problem with tone or voice. The mood I was in when I first sat down, or what was exciting to me at the moment colored the tone and the “voice” of what I had written, and it sounded like two different people had written sections of the chapter.  This change made the piece harder to read and pay attention to, because it felt choppy, like too many people were talking to me at the same time.

What’s interesting about this, is that if you look at some of the work of Vygotsky and other developmental psychologists, they talk about our development of our “inner voice” as a dialogue between us and the outside world.  For example, as you read this blog post, you “hear” the words in your head, as if I were sitting beside you, talking.  Our “voices” go from being external when we’re children to gradually becoming internal, although in moments of stress or difficult problem solving, we may still find that we start talking to ourselves, trying to work things out.  (This is why you can often find me asking out loud, “Where did I put those stupid car keys?” even if no one is around to answer me.)  This inner voice is real- it’s our narrator, so to speak, and this carries over to all of our modes of expression, even writing.

So back to editing-  When my writing got disjointed, it was like several different internal voices were speaking at the same time, and the flow of the work became harder to follow.  The internal voice, the narrator in our heads, was no longer one person, but several.  In order to make the piece flow and make sense, it becomes incredibly important to find that voice- that one person, so to speak, so the writing feels like a whole, not like different sentences in various typefaces, stapled together like a ransom note.

If you think of writing like music, there’s a big difference between playing the notes on a page and “making music” which requires both a flow of the notes, but an emotion as well behind the playing.  It’s why we can hear the same piece of music played by different people, but get something new out of every variation.  There’s a fluency that develops, like a child going from reading one   word   at   a   time  to reading whole sentences, to then reading with expression.  It’s the difference between reading a play and seeing it come to life with a performance of the same work.  The fluency and flow of the expression, the voice that develops, makes all the difference in whether  your writing works or whether it seems like a collection of disparate ideas with no common thread.

Now, if we apply this same concept to social media, I think companies and individuals are most successful when they find their voice.  Different people can contribute to the whole, but the common purpose needs to feel like it aligns together.  This is why when companies not known for cheeky ads try to pull one off, sometimes it succeeds, because it seems in line with the personification of the brand, and other times it fails miserably, because it runs counter to what people expect as an authentic voice of the company.

For example, Apple can get away with the “PC v Mac” ads because the personifications seem to ring true- it lines up with people’s experience and it matches what Apple has positioned itself as- an outsider.  It’s also why the whole controversy about the new iPhone is causing a stir, because it makes Apple look more like the mean establishment guys, and betrays the cool dude factor.  In contrast,  the “Im a PC and Windows 7 was my idea” while it seems very Microsoft, makes no sense to me whatsoever.  I do not believe for one second that that girl in the french cafe had anything to do with Windows 7, so the ad leaves me puzzling over what message I’m supposed to be getting here, because it seems disjointed and the meaning is lost for me.

In writing, in music, on Facebook, on Twitter, or in marketing in general, you need to find a comfortable voice that the company can use and emulate.  People have to be able to have a sense of who the company is, a personification they can identify with.  This is what makes each company unique, and why mimicry is so hard- even in real life, few people can pull off pitch perfect imitation of others.  By being ourself and finding your voice, you find why your are special and what you have to contribute.  Without this voice, you’re still like a confused teenager, trying on different personalities until they find one that seems to fit.

Don’t be that kid.

Tags: "Windows 7 was my idea", apple, children, flow, fluency, Microsoft, music, social media, voice, vygotsky, writing

10 Things Wish I Knew More About

I don’t know about you, but as I get older,  there’s more stuff, every year, on my list of things I wish I knew more about.  Sometimes, it’s a course I wish I had taken in school, or some area I just wish I understood better, because the holes in my knowledge base bother me.  So I thought I would do a quick blog post about the ten things I wish I knew more about, with the subtle wish people would point me in directions so I can fill my knowledge base, or at least meet more people who were willing to teach me more about these things.

Top Ten Things I Wish I Knew More About:

1. Coding. I wish I knew more about this, rather than only understanding some basic HTML.  I posted this to twitter earlier this fall, and some people directed me to this site which gives you a great 15 minute tutoring in Ruby.  This was awesome and fun.  But what are the next steps?  I want to know more about this so when I am thinking about my website or helping other people think about theirs, I have a better sense of what’s possible- I want to “get it” and not be frustrated.  I want to “talk with the developers” like Dr. Doolittle spoke with the animals (you can tell I’m a Mom who has kids who think these sorts of old Disney movies are cool) and not feel hopelessly ignorant and shallow.

2. Xcode and Cocoa- I attended a great session at Barcamp Philly about piecing together easy iphone apps, and I wish I knew more about Cocoa and how to do this.  The session was pretty quickly way over my head, and I had to leave before my brain exploded.  I felt dumb, so I want to fill this gap as well.

3.  Investments and Financial Analysis-I’m very conservative financially, and generally hate debt.  I have a very simple and clean balance sheet, and I am not a beginner in finance, but I wish my eyes didn’t glaze over so quickly when I read a company’s annual report and had a better sense of what metrics were most important.

4.  Shorting Stocks: I get buying and selling stocks.  I don’t get why shorting stocks- essentially borrowing shares at one price and then actually buying them at a lower price and then pocketing the difference works, and why this kind of floating craps game is legal, because it seems really ethically weird to me.  I need to know more about this.

5.  Educational Pedagogy: With my podcast, I talk frequently to educators, and sometimes, I feel I don’t fully understand their mindset.  Sometimes it seems rigid and sometimes totally out of step with basic social and developmental psychology.  I wish I understood more about what pedagogy really was, and whether the questions I have about our education system are crazy, simply because I don’t have a masters in education and haven’t had the “proper” training.

6. Mirror Neurons: This whole concept of the mirror neuron system fascinates me.  It’s a set of “wires” in the brain that allow us not only to anticipate the near future, but it allows our brains to mimic the actions we see other people doing, without actually doing them ourselves.  It’s also closely tied into the limbic system.  I think mirror neurons have a lot to teach us about marketing (You need to read Martin Lindstrom’s book Buyology, if you haven’t already) as well as autism- There’s some speculation that the mirror neuron system may be malfunctioning in kids with autism spectrum disorders, and I would be interested to see whether or not the problem may not be with the system as much as the interconnections with other areas in the brain.

7. Social Anthropology- It’s interesting, but I think the next decade is going to be about the mixing of verticals.  Much like red wine can be more interesting when it’s a blend, say a cabernet-merlot, rather than one or the other, I think the overlap of fields like sociology and anthropology will lead to more and more insights about people and why we function in groups the way we do.  I only took 2 sociology courses and one anthropology course while in college, and I wish I took more. Anyone have any good books on the topic i should read?

8.  Statistics- I can read and parse most statistics, having taken a grad level course in this while in school.  However, statistics for the web and statistics for the sciences are not exactly the same thing.  I want to know more both about how I should be looking at my web stats to predict how to alter the site or produce content to meet needs, as well as how to relate the world of online stats to the world of science stats, so as these fields begin to interplay more and more, everyone is speaking the same, not a divergent language.  I am reading Web Analytics in an Hour a Day, but I’m hoping to have a better sense by this time next year what those numbers really communicate to us in a larger picture.

9. How to teach writing and grammar to kids who struggle: I have kids who have both poor handwriting and poor composition skills.  Schools, on the whole, don’t teach writing as a basic skill- they have students write across the curriculum, but without any basic instruction on what really constitutes a great sentence versus a poor one; how to listen to your inner voice, and then craft that for the reader.  This is important because more and more communication will continue to happen through the web, and since most of it is text-based, people’s first impression of you will come through the written word, not through voice or an in person meeting.  Being able to write well will become an increasingly critical skill to have, and we have to make sure all kids have a good grasp on how to communicate their valuable ideas to others.

10. Time Management and Organization- As someone with ADHD, this is something I struggle with.  I can do organization when it is absolutely necessary, but I have a harder time staying organized all the time, not just in fits and starts.  I’ve tried tons of systems, but part of ADHD is also using your environment as part of your working memory, so I have tons of post-its and lists that keep me on track.    I’d like it if I felt more together daily, rather than together biweekly, after I do a purge. (It’s better than when it used to be a quarterly or biannual purge…)   I am always looking for the magic solution, so if you have any that really work for you, please share.  Right now, I depend heavily on the alarm feature on the iphone, but I also need systems or tips that would help keep 10 & 13 year old boys more organized, so they do not inherit my personal demons.

There’s tons more I am interested in- things that I find fascinating, but this covers a bunch of the stuff I consider holes in my knowledge, and things I want to learn more about.  I would love it if you could share resources, or post the 10 things you wish you knew more about on your blogs, so we can all start to help each other out and fill each others gaps.

Tags: cocoa, coding, education, finance, gaps, investing, ruby, social anthropology, statistics and analytics, stocks, ten things I wish I knew more about, top ten, writing

The Power of Writing

For an upcoming episode of the LD Podcast, I got to talk to Dr. Steve Graham of Vanderbilt University, one of the leading authorities on the development of writing skills and teaching writing to students in the country.  In the course of our conversation, we spoke about the importance of writing in the thought process.

Basically, and at the most elementary level, writing involves getting an idea, translating that idea into words or pictures, and transcribing it in some form, typing, handwriting a note, drawing, painting, etc. into another format.   I added the pictorial forms to Dr. Graham’s thoughts, because while it is not strictly writing- taking pictures or painting, drawing cartoons or storyboards are equally valid ways of expressing an idea so others can interact with it.

I asked him whether the very process of writing the words made the thoughts more real and concrete, and if this is what made critique of our work so much harder to take sometimes- you have taken the personal and private and made it public.  He thought that was probably very true, and I think it would be fascinating, now that technology has come so far, to do functional MRI’s of people during the creative process, and see how much of the sensory and emotional centers of the brain are activated.

Writing here on the blog, or even emails to people I care about, make me express feelings and ideas in a more concrete way.  It makes me take the idea or feeling, play with it, and figure out the best way to convey the feeling or message to another, hoping they receive it in the manner in which I intended it.  It makes this stuff personal and often more thoughtful and meaningful than just talking.

I think this is also why we feel plagiarism and hijacking the ideas of others without credit as such an affront.  Ideas are cheap until they are executed on, and are just thoughts, but once they are expressed and shared with others, they are yours and you have some ownership of them.  When you take someone’s idea and change it, elaborate on it, take it a step further- you then make it your own.  When you outline an idea to a friend, the last thing you want to see is a friend taking your ideas and passing them off as their own.  You might not have had a chance to execute on it, it might be a great idea, but you own it, at least as far as those you have communicated it to directly.  If someone else has a similar idea, but you haven’t talked with them about it first, then there’s no issue.  If you have spoken with them about it, and they take your thoughts and words and present it to others as their latest and greatest thing, then that’s dishonest.

Writing is something that’s a craft, and we each have our own style and ways of expressing ourselves.  Riffing on the ideas of others is great, but I think even on the big web, we should credit when we can, where the ideas start, because that is simple honesty.

The web in a small community.  It’s an insular community.  And even if you think all ideas are up for grabs, you better be cautious from whom you borrow, because it may come to haunt you in the future.

Tags: intellectual honesty, plagaism, steve graham, vanderbilt, writing