It’s been a few weeks since I posted here and for good reason. But this really isn’t the time or place to talk about it. (If you’re my Facebook friend and you know me personally, you already know why I haven’t posted.)

I’ve written here before about the need to post frequently and maintain a  constant presence. Consistently creating high-quality content is the best way to build influence in the social media sphere and to increase the chances that  posts be featured high in search results.

What if you’re not up to creating high-quality content? Jim Rome the popular sports DJ jokes that he has to go “down in the basement and recharge the batteries” every now and then to keep the quality of his program up to  his standards. This is a human and normal thing to do – yet professionals still feel the need to tweet their vacations away. Stop it.

If you’re in a corporate environment you need a plan for your personal time. For the agency blog, we keep a couple generic articles in reserve that can be posted when people are on vacation – we advise clients to do the same. If you’re a personal blogger you can do something similar, posting before your vacation but not have the posts go live  till you’re far away from responsibility – WordPress makes this really easy. Or you can just give yourself a break. I did and I don’t feel guilty.

Deciding what to fill the screen with can be challenging. And it’s also the subject of my latest post over at the agency blog.

I had two conversations with talented ad creatives yesterday that reminded me of how far maintaining this blog and my other sites have taken me in the last year. The first was about SEO and the second was about proficiency with development. Neither one of them had been expected to have any technical expertise until they were laid off last year and started job hunting. Improving my skill set is something I’ve been passionate about on in the last couple years — obviously I have good reason.

Working with the Web began for me professionally in 1996 while writing the first website and banners ads for a car company. I’ve continued to work on digital assignments since. Writing possibly hundreds of sites, thousands of banner ads, and various web components to advertising campaigns since. I even had a blogger blog and a WordPress.com blog for awhile. But I never had a reason to get too involved in the technical side of things till I began this self-hosted blog.

It was having this blog that caused me to start thinking about all of the things that I took for granted when someone else was doing them. SEO, CSS, analytics and just getting things to function the way you want them too. It’s also allowed to be experiment with tools, like those neat buttons at the top and bottom of this post.

Where am I going with this? Reading blogs is a great way to gain useful information, be exposed to different things, and have a good laugh. But actively maintaining a blog will build a deeper understanding of how things actually work. And may also help you develop some marketable skills before you really, really need them.

Some people love to rant. Even more people love to rant on a blog. Some blogs were even created for people to rant about politics, the price of milk, or even their ex’s grooming habits.

In the non-digital world, people find that kind of behavior repulsive. They simply don’t want to be around people that are negative. It’s true online too, don’t believe me? Read this great post by Brian Solis on the subject, he’s got numbers to prove people don’t want to hear about your problems. So if you blog or tweet about your brand, your business, or even your personal brand and you use negative language, you’ve got a problem.

Top 10 reasons people don’t want to hear your rant:

1. People read blogs because they’re looking for helpful opinions. Ranting only helps you vent.
2. You’re readers will tune you out.
3. People will think you’re a hot head. Do you really want clients or a potential employer to think you’re a hot head?
4. You’re only as  funny as Lewis Black in your mind. You’re readers won’t get it.
5. Most people are put in timeout for having tantrums offline.
6. The squeaky wheel gets the grease but not page hits or followers.
7. No one respects a complainer.
8. Negative advertising doesn’t work for a leader.
9. Even your mom hates it when you whine.
10. A successful blog champions solutions not problems.

So next time you feel like ranting, call a friend instead. Then sit down and think about how you can flip your rant on it’s head and write about solutions to the problem that has you so worked up. Channel the negative energy and do something positive with it instead. You’re readers will thank you for it by reading the post instead of tuning you out.

Edit note: I know some folks are going to say I’m missing the point or I’m redefining the term.

I’m writing this because I feel like it has to be said. Blogger transparency is mostly bull squeeze.

Fellow bloggers, you may feel open and transparent but you can’t escape who you are — a person. And that means you’re a complicated mess of contradictions, illogical instincts, and sub-conscious emotions.

Sure, we all put on our blogs where we work, who are clients are, and that we’ve got Amazon affiliate links here or there. That’s all dandy. But it’s all pretty damn obvious that you work at places that have clients and if you link a book or review a camera, you might wanna make 50 cents.

What I’m writing about now are prejudices that we all have that are not so obvious. The stuff we can’t escape because of who we are and how we’ve lived our lives. How we were raised, the economic conditions we face, our families, race and religion. Or even the things other people have done to us. These things shape our perspective on life and the world around us. That also shape how we think.

Sometimes this is negative. What happens to us makes us narrow minded, inflexible in our thinking and intolerant of other’s perspectives. Just try reading a political blog or two.

But sometimes it’s great. It creates the edge we have that makes what we write more interesting than a fact-only piece written by the AP. And it fills a blog’s content with passion, insights and maybe a few curse words. Let’s face it, if you weren’t different than me, with your own biases and peculiarities, I probably wouldn’t be all that interested in what you had to say.

This gooey stuff is what makes people who they are. But is it really none of anyone else’s business? On a professional blog? And should every blog post with “I was born to a South Carolina share cropper and robbed a convenience store when I was 14″? Or “I had a daddy who was an alcoholic but I was a cheerleader and captain of the debate team”? It’s personal, but it’s also the stuff that could informs the way someone writes and the opinions they have — which is what blogging is all about.

And what about politics, religion, parenting and social affectations. Does stuff belong in the workplace? Opinions differ on this, so it differs on whether it belongs on and appears on one’s blog.

To be transparent and truly understand one’s motives, is this stuff is important? I think it is on many issues. And do you really think people would discuss issues as freely if they were completely and totally open about their pasts and their burdens? I doubt it. And that’s why I’m OK with opaque.

I’m not saying basic disclosure shouldn’t be defacto — I should know if you’re speaking about your client. I’m just getting a little sick of people telling me how transparent and unbiased they are and how I can trust everything they say to be fact because they let me know who they take money from. You know what? I should be able to trust you that you’re telling the truth. And advertisers generally get sued when they say something that isn’t true or intentionally misleading. So get over it already.

What do you think?

My 3 year old had a ballet recital this weekend. It was awesome. 20 little girls just throwing it all out there for the sheer joy of doing something they enjoy. Big smiles on their faces and having the time of their short lives.

Ballet is new to them and they’re finding great joy in it. However, the longer us adults do something the more inhibited we become. We’re afraid to show that we’re amateurs and end up paralyzed.

But the fact is, most of us are amateurs at social media. Even the media professionals are. They may spend the day working on old media but they too are fish out of water when it comes to blogging. And even though social media is part of my job, it’s constantly changing, putting me and any participant on a perpetually steep learning curve. A curve that I embrace – it keeps things interesting.

So why not loose your inhibitions a bit in this space? Reach out, engage and be creative. Be that three year old just doing it for the joy of it. How can you make a fool of yourself if we’re all still learning?

I’ve already posted on the 10,000 foot view, so I wanted to get at about what I actually learned BlogWell Atlanta.

Andy Sernovitz had some important points on ethics and disclosure. He outlined dangers to a brand of not having clear, legal agreements with vendors acting on a brand’s behalf and opined that the new FCC guidelines a positive development for the industry. His belief is that social media will be much better served by government policing than it would by being allowed to evolve on its own the way email did.

There were some compelling BtoB stories. Orange and SunGuard had showed how social media benefited their bottom line through providing helpful information to clients and potential clients.

Also there was a terrific UPS crisis management story. And I enjoyed hearing about Coca-Cola’s Expedition 206 campaign.

But what did I really learn there? That there’s a vibrant community of professionals trying to figure this social media thing out. That it lives beyond the blogs and tweets. That people are engaged, smart, and want to do the right thing. And frankly that’s damn refreshing place to be compared to discussions about direct mail, email marketing, or print advertising. People really are seeing a brighter horizon in this space while in traditional marketing the world is shrinking.

So even if Twitter does turn out to be a stupid fad, I think social media is a pretty great space to be in.

One of the first things you learn as a copywriter is that borrowed interest is a lame way to engage a consumer. What is borrowed interest? It is borrowing interest from a celebrity or something perceived as interesting, like skateboards or superheros and attaching it to a product with no logical tie. Sex may have a lot to do with a lingerie but skateboards have nothing to do with orange juice.

Now I believe Catherine Zeta-Jones uses a telephone. But I don’t believe she knows anymore about cellphone service than most people. Men may watch Catherine slink across the screen and maybe even think it’s a good spot, but do they really believe her words anymore then the would an unknown actress? Not likely. They may listen, but awareness is another topic.

Borrowed interest worked great in the 50’s. But after awhile people noticed that if celebrities were paid enough they’d whore themselves out for any product under the sun.

What does a band leader have to do with a “luxury trailer”?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyone wanna guess if Michael Jackson ever rode a Honda Scooter around LA?

The strength of social media is about people connecting and informing each other what they really think. Transparency aside, a tweeter paid per tweet about rattle on about deodorant, or cars, or computers doesn’t seem like brand advocacy.

Sure, there are celebrities that people should listen to. @lancearmtrong is one I follow on Twitter and someone I wrote an Oakley ad for in 1996 when he was a former world champion headed to the Olympics. And just before being diagnosed with testicular cancer. He used and still uses the product. Could there possibly be a better advocate for cancer research or the athletic gear he actually uses? My step mother who is recovering from breast cancer finds what he’s done and, and is doing inspirational. Now that’s a brand advocacy.

The best brand advocates aren’t paid for their tweets. They’re people who believe in a product and are sponsored and use it like Armstrong or Tiger Woods who both use Nike.  Or they are the thousands of people that use a product and advocate for it everyday. Ever talked to a Harley owner about Japanese vs American?