If you weren’t aware, I’m a huge geek.

In the very rare moments when I have spare time, I like to write Star Trek fan fiction in audio drama form. Think old-school radio programs like The Shadow and you’ve got the general idea.

Technically, doing that – publishing and distributing a work of fan fiction the way we do it – breaches all sorts of copyright laws. It’s not like it’s a parody or something that could be considered protected first amendment speech. It’s copyright infringement, pure and simple (even though we don’t make a dime from it).

Even so, Paramount and Viacom leave us and others like us alone. Why?

Because we’ve stolen like artists. We might be breaching copyright, but we’re feeding the beast – the drive to buy the DVDs and costumes and books and movies and pay insane amounts of money to go to conventions and wait hours in line for a chance to say hi to William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Kate Mulgrew, Avery Brooks, and Scott Bakula. We’ve taken our favorite series and expanded on it. We made our own characters, created our mark on a universe that was otherwise limited to what you saw on TV and in the movies. We’ve expanded on the original work, created something new and valuable, and made the original works that much more powerful.

I’ve taken to licensing most all of my work under Creative Commons. It’s a bolt-on to copyright – it doesn’t eliminate the copyright you hold on your work, but allows others to remix your work without having to seek out permission every time. Depending on the license, as long as they credit you for the original work you did, they can use your work to create new works of their own. To me, this is the future of creative processes – it’s the start of new markets, new mediums, new methodologies.

However, it does have a dark side – stealing like an artist can backfire when the new work devalues or damages the intent of the original. Take the commercials from the car dealerships featuring loud “occupiers” demanding cheaper cars and higher Miles Per Gallon. When mindless overspending was partially responsible for the mess that led to the anger which led to the protests, you’re not doing your business any favors by pretending you understand what the movement is about.

All of the header photos you see on my blog are Creative Commons licensed. All of the books I release are Creative Commons. All of my new projects have a creative commons component to them.

I challenge you to steal like an artist in December – taking the best bits and pieces, mingling and merging and molding disparate domains of work together into a new, amazingly complex hybrid. Whose ideas will you improve on? Tell me in the comments!

(Header photo: Sorry Today)

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This post is part of the November Word Carnival series. For more on the Word Carnival, and for more great posts from my friends – check out the Carnival.

Schadenfreude.

Get to know this word – because it’s the thing that may eventually cause your movement to fail. It’s a German word for the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. It’s why TMZ is so popular, and it’s why – despite evidence that the economy is leading us directly towards a civil war – some folks continue to post snarky comments about the Occupy Wall Street movement on Facebook, Twitter, and giggle while the nightly news shows recaps #OWS arrests.

Let me be clear here: I do not want you to fail. I do want you to get a hell of a lot more organized so you can do this thing right.

Schadenfreude only comes into play when there’s an “us vs them” mentality. Our enemy slips up. Someone much more wealthy or powerful than us gets caught doing something naughty. We’d never be that silly. We could never do those things. But when something happens to mom, dad, or our little sister, suddenly we can empathize. It’s personal – it’s just as bad as if it happened to us.

While almost everybody could empathize with the feeling of not being able to pay a bill, losing a job, or thinking that it’s time to whack some high-level bankers like piñatas until no more money falls out, here’s the problem you’re facing (and it’s a big one): occupying a park is not something that everybody can do. Most of the 99% still has jobs (they might not be the best jobs, but we still have to work). A lot of the 99% run their own businesses. And trust me, while I’d have no reservations about chilling in a park all day, working on my laptop – a lot of folks don’t have that kind of time or luxury. Meanwhile, we wish we could do something to help, but we don’t know what – and then we get on with our day while you’re getting zip-cuffed in the park.

So, while we should be empathizing with you, we end up dissociating from you instead. You become “the protesters” and not Mary the 32 year old spinster who barely scrapes by in her apartment on Prospect Road since losing her job at the bank while her former CEO decides whether or not to buy a third gold-lined umbrella holder at Bed, Bath, and I’ve Got Too Much Fuckin’ Money. And it’s not the media’s fault. Got it?

Don’t believe me? What did I just say about a banker piñata? Didn’t you get that, “Hell yes” feeling? OK, how about if our banker’s name is now Gary from Littleton, father of two and avid donator and volunteer to the foodbank? Now it’s a little harder to justify whipping out the whiffle bat, right? He might be a rich prick at work, but I can’t shake down a volunteer dad of two.

Schadenfreude is what enables us to disconnect from our morals and justify harm to marginalized groups. It’s why ordinarily rational white folks did nothing while black folks were getting firehosed for sitting in the wrong chair. And it’s why folks who should be supporting you may just be changing the channel instead.

While a mass occupation is great and all – hey, it worked for Woodstock, right? – you’re running out of time to make this personal. You have a serious marketing problem.

You desperately need a leader. Someone who can stand up – someone well-spoken – and deliver a speech that makes these things personal. Remember Obama’s 2008 campaign? He took this country by storm, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. Why? Because he was the guy who understood our problems. The guy who told us stories about people just like us - who came from roots just like us - and had a plan to try and fix the problem. You need an Obama. And you need a plan.

What’s #OWS’s plan? I’ve been watching for a while now and I don’t see one. If you (and even if you aren’t a part of the #OWS) want to get sh!t done, you have to get activation.

The public’s lack of activation for your cause is not a sign of laziness, but instead a lack of clarity on how to help. Any project must have that clarity to succeed.

So here’s a plan of action for you – and anyone else who wants to make something happen – because you need it:

- Get Your Message Straight and Align it with What Your Audience Wants to Hear: Stop the political preaching on your blog. We get it. Instead, I want you to start posting the personal stories (video if you can) of every single person you can – always include a photo – hopefully of the person with their family. Once a day, non-stop. Use a secondary Tumblr blog if you have to. Make this thing personal. For the titles of those blogs, first name, town name, age, and family stats.

- Get Your Message to the Right People and Be Consistent: Send these out as press releases. Flood the media with them. Give Obama-type online talks and post them online for all to see once a week.

- Develop the Right Platforms and Design a Clear Path: Create a newsletter. Your website is not enough. Get people to sign up to your newsletter and give them a weekly course of action, not just events or marches, but 5 small things they can do that week to help the movement and raise awareness.

- Make Spreading the Message Simple: Create a guidebook that you can use to educate the general public with stats directly from the Government on why things are so bad. I’m also working on an ignite-style video with those same stats. Release everything you do under Creative Commons so anyone can reprint and share it without asking for permission.

- Generate Sympathy and Camaraderie: Nominate a leader in each city who can speak for their movement. This person should be well-spoken, well-groomed, and very sympathetic. No political preachers, no lecturers, just a plain-jane-family guy or gal. Then have them share the stories that came out of the occupation that day. Have them give a speech twice a week to rally support, to give followers a list of tasks to take on that week.

- Find Allies to Help You: Start courting small businesses. Don’t expect handouts or freebies, but promise to shop in their stores in exchange for spreading the word or standing by you if they get interviewed (or, better yet – ask them to do a video interview for you and post it on the blog: the more business support you have, the better you will do).

- Change Your Tactics to Leverage the Element of Surprise: Silence works better than any other method of intimidation. Instead of loudly protesting outside of a bank, instead, line up, side-by-side, five rows deep, and *stare* at folks who cross the line. That’s creepy as all hell and will get you all sorts of attention.

- Engage the Desire to Belong to Something: Give everyday joe’s an ability to show solidarity. A bumper sticker, a t-shirt, something… and a check-list of activities to perform (ie: join a credit union, don’t shop at xyz) so that we can help you, even if we can’t occupy with you (as an aside, this will help you raise some money to afford to sit around in a park all day).

With all that even marginally attempted, Occupy Wall Street (and all the other Occupy movements) would become an unstoppable force, so what’s stopping you?

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This post is part of the October Word Carnival on productivity. Check it out for more great advice on being productive!

(Header photo: Occupy Wall Street)

Seth Godin had an awesome blog post today about aiming for infinity in your outreach – that is, no number of fans is ever enough. No number is really ever satisfying.

There is a really important lesson between the lines of Seth’s blog post: you don’t have to reach everybody. Nobody can reach everybody. So, I put it to you:

You just have to reach one.

One really dedicated, committed fan. Make them feel special, because they are special. They’re an activator – and you only need one.

To clarify: Activation = Attention + Action – a simplification of the AIDA model.

Our brains can only hold a certain number of connections to the people that matter at once, it’s called Dunbar’s number. And we ignore this fact as we reach for increasingly ridiculous numbers of subscribers, followers, friends, fans, and views – like they’re marshmallows in a game of chubby bunny. We forget that at some point, with enough marshmallows shoved in your pie hole, you choke. You can’t possibly please or activate more than Dunbar’s number at any given time, because folks who want to interact with you – and are subsequently ignored because your bandwidth is too low – will not activate.

Here’s what happens, though, when you reach for one: you use one of your Dunbar’s number slots for this person. You make them feel valued and become an activator for them – because they’re buying from you, they’re activated, they’re participating. In turn, they use a Dunbar slot for you – but they also spread your information to their other Dunbar connections. That is the only way you ever increase your network beyond your Dunbar connections. That’s it. The only way.

Going beyond your significant other, family, friends, and colleagues, you only have so many Dunbar slots to utilize for building your business network. You maybe have 25-50 Dunbar-level connections to use – and all of them can be activators, given that they’re the right people that should be in those Dunbar slots. As an aside, I advocate relentlessly cutting non-activators out of your life as fast as possible – you must become an activator for your own activators, or they’ll stop. I would guess that for most people, the actual number is closer to 5. We’ve all heard that saying: you are the amalgamation of the 5 closest people to you.

That sure as hell takes the pressure off, doesn’t it? At maximum capacity, you only ever have to delight 5 folks at a time.

This is what social media is. It’s not a race for fans, followers, friends, views, or subscribers, like those things are a scarce and limited resource. They’re not. Here’s what is rare: actual relationships that require and earn attention from both parties.

Social media allows us to break through the barriers that once existed between us and those five activators. The only thing big numbers allow you to do is find and replace potential activators faster – beneficial, but not a necessity; and certainly not something worth placing significant effort toward.

How will the knowledge that you only need one activator (and can only ever delight 5) change your business? And how are you going to become a better activator for someone you believe in?

(Header photo: Hugs)

QR codes are all the rage. Who ever thought something that looks like it came out of a dot matrix printer from the ’90′s could be such a powerful marketing tool in 2011?

But I’ve got a bone to pick with marketers who use QR codes. You’re well on your way to a viral social media nightmare that you cannot possibly imagine, and your cute little QR code is going to be to blame.

Don’t believe me? OK. Fine. Let me give you an interactive demonstration. Ready your smart phone, dear reader!

Scan for Adorable Bunny Video

Go ahead. Scan it. It’s SFW, I promise. I’ll wait.

Now, if you’re done soiling yourself, I hope you can see my point. Did I tell you where the QR code was going to go? No. I told you what you might see if you scan the code (no spoilers here, you have to scan it).

Now imagine what would happen if, say, I – Nick Armstrong of WTF Marketing – saw this lovely QR code from one of my loose competitors:

Now, I love Reu (owner of RFI) — he’s a fantastic fellow. But he’s one of the only people in Fort Collins who’ve put out a public QR code for their business, so I’m forced to use his as an example of how it can all go horribly wrong.

I had the thought that, if I had a QR code sticker, or you know – photoshop and a high-efficiency color printer, I could “amend” Reu’s QR code advertisement. You can’t even tell I’ve modified the above image.

In case that QR Code is too small for you to scan, here it is:

I’m reasonably sure that Reu didn’t have that in mind when he created that ad. Now, stickers can be printed off my simple deskjet on $5 Avery paper. I’m now armed with a swarm of PR-damaging QR codes to bitchslap my competition’s reputation back to the stone age.

Aside the fact that I’ve blogged about this, there’s no proof it was me, and I can get away with impunity. Sorry, Reu.

I’d never do this. But the fact that I thought about it implies that someone else probably has – someone with less moral scruples than me. And that someone is out there right now screwing with your QR codes. Imagine what would happen if they didn’t have any remorse as to what they linked to? Maybe goat porn? You betcha.

Worse still, when the company gives no indication of where their QR code goes (Reu did in his poster, but it’s not immediately obvious) — it’s not clear what action the user is going to be expecting when they scan the code. I saw one on the back of a Heinz Ketchup  bottle that said, “Send ‘Food’ to 12345 or Scan this QR Code”. Am I expecting to send a text message? QR codes can do that, you know. Or generate a phone call, or send me a business card or text display. What am I supposed to expect?

Remember that old rule for making good presentations: Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em, tell ‘em, and tell ‘em what you told ‘em? This should be the de facto standard golden rule for marketers. If you print something, expect people to misinterpret (or in their heads, “interpret”) your marketing message unless (and even if) you are explicitly clear about it.

All in all, don’t be afraid to use QR codes. Just tell the consumer what to expect when they scan it — and check in on your QR codes after you’ve posted ‘em to make sure nobody like me has screwed with them.

(Header photo: How do you like my new QR code tattoo?)

Every so often, I see something that makes me cringe like I’ve been kicked in the nuts:

Which, in my world, is usually followed up by something utterly inexplicable, such as this book found in the Children’s section of the Kindle book store:

Suddenly, researching alternatives to abstinence-only sex education just doesn’t feel as wholesome.

There’s certain ways to engage your community; the first is to ask for help – but you can’t be skeezy about it.

The second is to offer up information – but it has to be the right kind of information at the right time.

Anything else is engaging your community the wrong way.

(Header photo: WTF Noob by gschueler)

I had a crackhead-esque craving for an Orange Julius the other day. Like, gotta have it, spare no expense, must get that damn treat kind of craving usually reserved for Star Trek paraphernalia.

So I headed to the obligatory mall (there are no stand-alone Orange Juliuses in Fort Collins). I walked through the rows of closed shops and aged interiors of a previous age of consumerism.

Orange Julius is a tribute to a past age. Don’t get me wrong – malls can be, and in some places, still are, relevant. But big picture – most malls get it wrong. And Orange Julius is inextricably linked to the aging image of the American shopping mall.

This isn’t the big problem. The big problem facing Orange Julius is complacency. And that complacency allowed them to fuck with a fat kid’s food – and that’s a big problem. (I’m the fat kid, in case you were wondering).

I was “greeted” by a generic teen mall employee who took my order, my cash, and then pulled a strawberry Orange Julius blender container from an ice chest. Instead of making one fresh, on the spot, to-order, she poured the half-melted pre-made Orange Julius and served it up.

I stuck around a bit to see if this happened to any other customers (what few there were) – and discovered it was pretty much the same story across the board until a flavor ran out. Once every six or seven customers, someone would get a 100% fresh Orange Julius. Any other time, the new was blended with the old or only the old was used.

Yuck.

Your only job is this. You exist only to delight your customers. Thats. Fucking. It. How on earth do you delight your customers when you can’t be bothered to do the work? If only one out of six of your customers is delighted, you’re doing something wrong.

Don’t argue the cost savings issue – surely it wastes more money to waste left-over old Orange Julius at the end of the night. And don’t give me the “disconnected low-cost teenage employee” issue either – if the Porn Industry is any indication, the “barely legal” crowd is doing just fine “delighting” customers world-wide.

Let’s parallel this story with two others: Dairy Queen and Berry Blendz.

Dairy Queen also made some headway through the malls back in the day, but they also built an outstanding external presence which serves them well to this day. They don’t make everything fresh (though, can you imagine how amazing that would be? I’d wait 3 hours for that Blizzard) – but they do make everything to-order. There’s no pre-made Blizzards under teenage guard anywhere, ever. I can’t speak for every DQ out there, but they’ve usually always done a great job greeting me and making small talk while they whip up whatever belt-notch-adding-treat I’ve paid for.

Berry Blendz is like the local coffee shop of smoothie stores. It’s like they’re fruit baristas. Everything is made to order and as fresh as possible. There’s no ice chest with pre-blended smoothies. Would that make it faster? Probably. Would it be worth the shorter wait? Have you ever tasted a smoothie past its prime?

This story is not unique to any one industry and it almost always starts with complacency.

What are some businesses you wish would freshen up?

(Header photo: Mallwalking Photo Shoot Rejects by Chip Harlan)

I’m not apologetic about the fact that I run a business called WTF Marketing.

Beyond making me giggle every time I get to introduce someone new to my business, I use it as a filter to screen for the types of people who will be receptive to the off-the-cuff marketing perspective I bring.

What kind of business has a swear in their name? Mine does. And I like it that way. It’s irreverent, not disrespectful. There’s a difference. I’ve generally accepted that I’ll lose about 25% of prospective clients because of this stance.

Does it bother me that I’ve lost potentially big clients? Not really. That’s their loss and I’m better off; I stick to my guns because my hair turns gray less quickly when those kinds of people opt-out. And being 25, I don’t want to start using my Just For Men coupons until I really have to.

The Fuck in my business name doesn’t diminish the awesome things I’ve done to market small businesses. It doesn’t stop me from running circles around my competition. It does make me more efficient by dealing with only the kinds of clients I want to serve.

There’s room for guile in business; I’m not talking about deceit with harm in mind – that’s wrong, plain and simple.

I’m talking about purple cows – a purple cow is still a cow, it just looks deceptively funky. Only the bravest of the brave will attempt to milk one. These are the businesses that I’m targeting; those brave individuals who understand that there’s inherent risk in doing things the new way, but that the reward is there for those willing to take the chance. And if you’re looking for a guide, you won’t find many better than someone willing to go to the very edge.

In the words of Q, “If you can’t take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires, both subtle and gross. But it’s not for the timid.”

It’s true in life and in business.

The question is, in your business story – how far are you willing to go to stick to your guns?

(Header photo: Stand Out by PDBreen)

This is a story most web people never tell small business owners and unfortunately, it’s the one that can bite them the hardest. It’s important to get your website done right and some people have no business building websites.

Second only to the “website right now” all-in-one cookie-cutter websites you get for a monthly fee from your hosting provider are the website designers who use Dreamweaver to build your site.

A few weeks ago, someone asked for my help to market their new website. I went to the site, and – as usual – took a peek under the hood. I discovered something horrifying. The entire site had been designed in tables. There were no ALT tags. In fact, there were no standard tags used for SEO at all.

I asked how much the site cost, and the answer was pretty damn shocking. So, here’s a quick and simple list to figure out if your web person is worth their salt (please note: this list is NOT all-inclusive… here’s another list of questions you may want to ask):

1. Will you (the client) be able to edit the website’s content when your web guy is done?
2. Is SEO included in the price of the site? (here’s a hint: this should not be a separate line item)
3. Does your web designer know what an ALT tag is? What a META tag is? Will they use TABLES or DIVs to create the structure of the site?
4. Is the hosting included in the price of the site? If not, is it less than $10 a month?

I’m going to get some flak from my fellow web folk, but here’s the deal: there is no reason to build a business website without doing the SEO for it. None. There is no reason to build a website in tables anymore. There’s no reason to build a website without the end-user being able to edit the content.

I’m not in the business of badmouthing businesses, but it makes my blood boil to see small businesses get taken advantage of when trying to build a website. It’s like storytelling with laryngitis.

Don’t let yourself get hosed. Get a second opinion. Get a third. Hell, get mine – it’s free and I won’t make a play for your business; it would be unethical for me to try to sell you after looking at another business’s bid.

Knowledge is the best defense to jerk-asses who want to take your money and dumb-asses who don’t know their trade as well as they should.

(Header photo: The Geico Caveman)

This is a guest post by Logan Zanelli – my favorite branding rockstar.

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Are you trying to build a community for the right reasons?

By now, a huge percentage of entrepreneurs know about blogging, social media, community building, and the importance of Internet marketing.

But not all of them are doing it because it’s the best fit for their business.

Far too many small business owners come to me for consulting and say they want help getting set up with social media accounts, and have no idea why they need them.

Sure, they’ve heard about Twitter. They’ve seen stories of businesses that have thousands of fans on Facebook. They know that blogs and social media are the latest marketing fad.

But they don’t “get it.”

Recently I had a conversation with a company that’s been a client of mine for almost a decade now. The management team at this firm recently decided they wanted to get better results from their website and invest in more Internet marketing so they could compete with larger, national competitors.

Part of what they were requesting from me was guidance and assistance in using social media for marketing their company and its services.

Then things got a bit strange

After my initial call with them, I put together a proposal that outlined the steps they would need to take to develop an effective social media and Internet marketing campaign. These steps included blogging about their industry, investing time in building relationships with social media, keyword research, and several other techniques.

When I presented the proposal to them, I explained that in order for this plan to work, they needed to fully commit to it. I told them they needed to decide on a schedule for writing and posting new content to their blog – and then stick with it regardless of how busy they get. I explained how they needed to invest time and effort into building relationships with their audience on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And I told them they needed to be committed to this long-term, because it would take time to see the results of their work.

And just like dozens of companies I’ve talked to before, they balked.

Their marketing manager called me back to say the management team had met, considered my proposal, and decided they didn’t want to change what they’re doing now.

They didn’t want to put in the work it would take to be successful

Unfortunately, that company was unwilling to invest extra effort into a plan that would make them more successful against much larger competitors, yet still profess to want that very result.

They’re not willing to work for the results they seek.

“Free” doesn’t mean there’s no cost

This particular company had heard all the hype about social media and Internet marketing. They’ve heard the stories and read the articles about local businesses thriving on the results they’ve got with their online efforts. And they know that it doesn’t cost money to set up a Twitter account, blog, Facebook page, or LinkedIn profile.

But they were not willing to accept the cost in time and commitment it would take.

The bottom line…

If you’re trying to build a community, or launch an Internet marketing or social media campaign, ask yourself why.

Why are you doing it?

Is it because you’ve made the commitment to your own success and are ready to work hard for the results you seek?

Or is it just because everyone else is doing it and you think you should too?

Take a closer look and you’ll find everybody wants results, but very few are willing to work for them.

But if you infuse your marketing and community-building efforts with some commitment and determination, and you’ll be amazed at the results you can achieve.

So how ’bout it?

Have you got the guts to make it work?

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Logan Zanelli is the author of “How to Go from Boring to Rockstar in 30 Days,” a course that teaches you how to build a unique style and become the “rockstar” of your niche.

(Header photo: Giving Up by David Robert Wright)

When I have a product, I’ll be all over the QR code movement (click on the link if you don’t know what a QR code is). Basically, it’s a barcode that smartphones can read – they can resolve to websites or add contact information.

Here’s a few QR code uses that I’d like to see:

• QR codes on the backs of book covers with a link to a video intro from the author.
• QR codes at the Denver Museum to get more information on my favorite pieces of art.
• A QR code on my favorite soda to show me nutrition information comparisons.
• A QR code on a shirt at Kohl’s, which takes me to a display of a complete outfit involving that shirt.
• A QR code scavenger-hunt to find the best sightseeing spots in a city I’ve never been to before.

In fact, I don’t know why food bloggers, fashion bloggers, art bloggers, and travel bloggers aren’t printing out a bunch of QR codes for their blog posts and sticking ‘em to the backs of menus, on outfits, on art displays, and on city guides.

Do you?

(Header photo: QR Code Cupcake by Clever Cupcakes)