Category Archives: Personal

A collection of personal thoughts and stories

What a Social Media “Like” Should Really Mean

Originally posted in Mediapost’s Search Insider on October 3, 2013

Italy’s Agriturismo program has been a success by any measure you might want to use. Since the initial legislation was passed in 1985, thousands of small farms through Italy, teetering on the edge of extinction, have been thrown a financial lifeline by letting operators supplement their income  welcoming tourists to “stay on the farm.” The program includes one-time renovation grants and an ongoing marketing program. Today, there are almost 3,500 agriturismos throughout Italy. Many of these have sprung up just in the past decade. The program brings the market directly to the farm, allowing onsite sales of products to guests and showcasing the homegrown produce in the agriturismo’s restaurant.

The program’s success, however, has superheated the competition for tourism among the operators. In Tuscany, where I stayed at one such farm, there are 1,000 agriturismos, almost one third of the total number in Italy. You literally can’t throw a Tuscan stone without hitting some type of tourist-targeted operation. This competitive environment is made even more fervent when you consider that almost every restaurant in Italy is also an independent operation. There are no big chains. All these businesses are literally mom and pop (sorry, Momma and Poppa) operations. They run on a shoestring. There is little to no money for advertising. If ever there was a test bed for guerilla marketing, this is it.

Here, online ratings are the currency of choice. A top spot in an online directory is the difference between life and death for these businesses. In this almost perfect but unflinchingly brutal adaptive environment, if you’re terrible, you die quickly. If you’re mediocre, you die slowly. If you’re good, you stumble along. And for a very few exceptions, if you’re excellent, you may do OK and even prosper, relatively speaking. I would put Fausto and Susanna in this last category. They run a small agriturismo just outside San Gimignano.

When it comes to the directories that matter, one towers above the rest. TripAdvisor wields the same power in this market that Google wields in our world of search. It is the ultimate arbitrator of life and death. And the smartest of the operators have taken this to heart. They “get” social media at a level that is humbling to this particular North American online marketing “expert.” It’s not just asking for a “like” or a good review. They know that the best way to get a glowing review is to utterly, undeniably, completely deserve it.  There’s no faint praise here; you have to blow your customer’s socks off.

It’s this intimate, person-to-person exchange that makes this the most efficient market possible. No money or marketing efforts are wasted on inefficient channels.  There are no middlemen. It all takes place directly between the host and the guest. It’s completely genuine. How many marketing campaigns can you say that about? They give you the experience of a lifetime, and you say a heartfelt thank you. TripAdvisor (and Facebook, and Yelp, etc.) is just there to make sure the world hears about it.

If Fausto and Susanna have understood the power of social media, Marina Pasquino is teaching a master’s class in it. In all my years of staying in hotels and consulting to businesses, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a better-run business than Signora Pasquino’s small hotel on the Adriatic coast. My jaw dropped during check-in, and didn’t manage to snap back into place until we left seven awestruck days later.

The Hotel Belvedere, a tiny hotel in Riccione with less than 50 rooms, has blown TripAdvisor’s review algorithm to smithereens. It doesn’t just top the ratings for hotels in its area – it’s TripAdvisor’s number-one hotel in all of Italy, and one of the top 25 hotels in the world! Of the over 800 reviews it’s collected, 97% of them are effusive over-the-top odes to the hotel, its staff and the complete Belvedere experience.  The feedback is so overwhelming positive, posts sometimes get flagged for manual review to ensure they’re not fraudulent. They’re not, by the way. I mean, how many hotel staff actually hug you when you check in? Seriously.

Business is almost completely generated by word of mouth (both traditionally and digitally). Guests come back every single year. And they bring their friends. During our week, several groups (many from Canada, where I’m from) were at the hotel. And all this is fueled by a warm contact through social media after you leave. With the Belvedere, when you talk about friending and liking, you don’t have to put quotes around the words. In this case, those labels match your intention.

I’ve talked before about how rugged adaptive environments drive the evolution of new breeds of marketers. I can’t think of any environment more rugged than the tourism industry in today’s Italy. And here, the Faustos, the Susannas and the Marinas are showing that if you work your ass off to be amazing, we’ll return the favor by letting people know. I’m not sure what you would call this particular species, but I hope it prospers. We could certainly use more of them in the world.

What is this “Online” You Speak Of?

First published September 12, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider.

I was in an airport yesterday, and I was eavesdropping. That’s what I do in airports. It’s much more entertaining than watching the monitors. In this particular case, I was listening to a conversation between a well-dressed elderly gentleman, probably in his late ’80s, and what appeared to be his son. They were waiting for pre-boarding. The son was making that awkward small talk — you know, the conversation you have when you don’t really know your parent well enough anymore to be able to talk about what they’re really interested in, but you still feel the need to fill the silence. In this case, the son was talking to his dad about a magazine: “I used to get a copy every time I flew to London,” he said. “But they don’t publish it anymore. It’s all done online.”

The father, who had the look and appearance of a retired university professor, looked at his son quizzically for a few minutes. It’s as if the son had suddenly switched from English to Swahili midstream in his conversation.

“What’s ‘online’?”

“Online — on the Internet. It’s published electronically. There’s no print version anymore?”

The father grappled with the impact of this statement, then shook his head slowly and sadly. “That’s very sad. I suppose the mail service’s days are numbered too.”

The son replied, “Oh yes, I’m sure. No one mails things anymore.”

“But what will I do? I still buy things from catalogs.” It was as if the entire weight of the last two-and-a-half decades had suddenly settled on the frail gentleman’s shoulders.

At first, I couldn’t believe that anyone still alive didn’t know what “online” was. Isn’t that pretty much equivalent to oxygen or gravity now? Hasn’t it reached the point of ubiquity at which we all just take it for granted, no longer needing to think about it?

But then, because in the big countdown of life, I’m also on the downhill slope, closer to the end than to the beginning, I started thinking about how wrenching technological change has become. If you don’t keep up, the world you know is swept away, to be replaced with a world where your mail carrier’s days are numbered, the catalogs you depend on are within a few years of disappearing, and everything seems to be headed for the mysterious destination known as “online.”

As luck would have it, my seat on the airplane was close enough to this gentleman’s that I was able to continue my eavesdropping (if you see me at an airport, I advise you to move well out of earshot). You might have thought, as I first did, that he was in danger of losing his marbles. I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. For over four hours, he carried on intelligent, informed conversations on multiple topics, made some amazing sketches in pencil, and generally showed every sign of being the man I hope to be when I’m approaching 90. This was not a man who had lost touch with reality; this was a man who is continually surprised (and, I would assume, somewhat frustrated) to find that reality seems to be a moving target.

We, the innovatively smug, may currently feel secure in our own technophilia, but our ability to keep up with the times may slip a little in the coming years. It’s human to feel secure with the world we grew up and functioned in. Our evolutionary environment was substantially more stable than the one we know today. As we step back from the hectic pace, don’t be surprised if we lose a little ground. Someday, when our children speak to us of the realities of their world, don’t be surprised if some of the terms they use sound a little foreign to our ears.

Maybe We Need More Skin in the Game

First published August 15, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I think our world, — or, more specifically, our marketplace — is a little too abstract. We — and by we, I mean the marketers, the suppliers to the market — live too far removed from the market itself: the consumers of the supplied goods.

It’s a point touched on by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his most recent book, “Antifragile.” Marketers and manufacturers, he suggests, don’t have enough skin in the game to keep them honest. They’re too far removed from accountability. There are too many protective buffers between them and the consequences of their actions.

The law is supposed to provide the accountability — but let’s face it, when it comes to enforcing accountability in the marketplace, we’re a long way from the Code of Hammurabi (one of the first legal codes known), where sloppy workmanship enacted a pretty definite penalty: If a builder has built a house for a man, and has not made his work sound, and the house he built has fallen, and caused the death of its owner, that builder shall be put to death.

Or, consider if the actions of the captain of the Exxon Valdez would have been different if he would have been answerable to a law like this: If a man has hired a boat and boatman, and loaded it with corn, wool, oil, or dates, or whatever it be, and the boatman has been careless, and sunk the boat, or lost what is in it, the boatman shall restore the boat which he sank, and whatever he lost that was in it.

The world was a smaller and more intimate place back then. You couldn’t hide behind corporate lawyers, malpractice insurance and legal loopholes. If you screwed up, chances are you’d lose an eye, a hand or even your life. If you built a bridge that collapsed, you might as well have been under the bridge, because your fate would be the same.

Now, I’m not sure we’re ready to return to the brutal simplicity of an “eye for an eye” legal code, but it does bring up a rather thorny issue: If there are little to no consequences for shoddy or unethical work, what keeps us honest? There’s nothing like skin in the game to provide some pretty compelling motivation for ethical business practices. And there’s nothing like a consequence-free pass to encourage fast and loose corporate behavior.

The good news, I suppose, is that technology is once again making the world a little more intimate. McLuhan’s Global Village is coming to pass, and the unethical of the world are increasingly being held accountable for their actions. In fact, the speed at which this is happening is confounding the legal systems of many a nation, as vigilantism and frontier justice are increasingly springing up, unchecked by due process and judicial oversight.

I avoid trying to predict the future, but fairness and accountability are hardwired into us, so I suspect that as technology allows us to identify those responsible in the most egregious cases, we will be moved to demand action. We will force the market to have more skin in the game, as our opinions and beliefs, in aggregate, will define that market.

Comparing and Contrasting the Classes of ’79 and ’13

First published July 2, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

My youngest daughter just graduated from high school. I graduated from my high school a third of a century ago. The things you read about every day here at MediaPost have made the world a much different place for her than it was for me.

Or have they?

I was actually struck these past few months with how her grad experience didn’t seem all that much different than mine. The biggest difference, it seemed, was in how she connected with her friends. But the “why” – the topics of those connections – seems very familiar.

She is graduating from a small school, with a grad class of just over 50. I graduated from a small-town high school in Alberta in a class of 70. Like me, she has gone to school with most of her class from kindergarten right through to grade 12 – so the social dynamics in both cases were fairly tightly woven.

Both classes, the class of ‘13 and the class of ’79, were under the temporary euphoria of youthful confidence. All things seem possible when you’re 18. The world is not a grinding gristmill of monthly mortgage payments, day-to-day job-related drudgery, vague yet persistent aches and pains and innumerable other nagging details that suck the life out of you. It’s a lion waiting to be tamed, a journey begging to be taken or an adventure still to be had. Is there any more optimistic time in your life than graduation? I wish that it could last forever, but I know better.

Both classes had their inevitable run-ins with authority that seemed unreasonable and inflexible. In both cases, said “run-ins” arose from social “traditions” that ran afoul of scheduled class time. Both times, the phrases “can’t condone” and “set a precedent” was used a lot by the school administration. Of course, such nuances don’t mean much to you when you’re 18. “Party” is a word with much more meaning.

Speaking of parties, both classes had their share. The biggest difference between ’79 and ’13 was in how word of these parties propagated through the grad social network. In 1979, “viral” meant hanging out at the main intersection of town (I told you I grew up in a small town) waiting for familiar trucks (I told you I grew up in Alberta) to go by, so you could ask where the party was. Today’s approach seems much more efficient.

Style also played a major role in both events. In many cases, it’s our first experience with formal wear, which means a lot of time is devoted to dress and/or suit shopping. My daughter has been wearing high heels in the house for the past week, hoping to master the trick of locomotion without severe injury. Of course, in my case it was a very stylish dark brown velvet tuxedo with matching bowtie. Hey, it was ’79, and my fashion influences were “The Love Boat” and Jack Tripper from “Three’s Company.” Cut me some slack! There were people who went in blue jeans (remember – rural Alberta).

Another major theme was, and is, “Who’s going with who (sic)” to graduation. For those of us who were less precocious in our experience with the opposite sex, a lot of pressure came with graduation. We had to get a date, or be labeled as “the guy who went stag.” This meant you had a lot of socially inept teenagers going through the trauma of a first date at the same time, in the same place. All the technology in the world can’t improve person-to-person communication in this scenario.

It seems to me that though the way the class of ’13 negotiated through their grad experience may have changed since 1979, the actual things that make up that experience seem remarkably familiar. It’s still about transition: whether it be in relationships, opportunities, routines or responsibility.  It’s that awesome experience of sitting on the cusp, when all things seem possible. It’s believing that you own the world – and that  the world is an essentially good place. Whether you express that on Facebook, Instagram or while leaning on the side of a Chevy pick-up at the “Four Corners” in Sundre, Alberta — the “how” may have changed, but the “why” has remained the same.

The Open and Shut Mind

First published June 13, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

A few years ago I was invited to a conference on advertising at a major university. The attendees were a fairly illustrious group of advertising professionals, including several senior executives from major agencies. There was also a healthy sprinkling of academics with impeccable credentials. I was in privileged company.

The organizer of the conference asked me to come up with a “dinner topic.” She explained that she wanted to generate a lively discussion at the various tables as we dug in and broke bread. It was okay if it was a “little” controversial. I must have ignored the qualifier, because my suggestion was, “Is advertising evil?” I have never been one for half measures.

As the ad illuminati settled at their tables, I set the stage by providing two opposing points of view:

First, the positive side of advertising. It can be a way to touch the very core of what makes us human, sometimes moving us to greatness. It can unify communities, create bonds and motivate us en masse. Not only can it be a social “lubricant” but, at its best, advertising can be a powerful change agent as well.

Now, the “evil” side: Does advertising take all this power and fritter it away to drive pure avarice?  Does it short-circuit our Darwinian behavioral wiring, chaining us to a hedonistic treadmill where we constantly want something we don’t have? Regular readers will detect a theme here.

It wasn’t difficult to read the mood of the room as I was wrapping up. My dad has a saying that, despite its off-color nature, sums up the atmosphere of this particular gathering better than anything else I can think of: “It went over like a fart in the house of worship.” I cautiously headed back to my table to take part in the planned “lively discussion.”

My tablemates didn’t know where to start. It seemed that it had never crossed their mind that advertising could be anything but the highest of callings. To have a debate, you need to at least have an abstract understanding of the opposing viewpoint, even if you don’t agree with it. At my table the most common question was, “What do you mean, ‘Is advertising evil?’” I had apparently introduced an entirely foreign concept.

I swallowed and forged ahead, sketching out the basis of my hypothesis. I tried to stay in the abstract, hoping to generate a philosophical debate and avoid getting caught in an emotional catfight. It seemed, though, that I had not only hit a hot button, but had taken a sledgehammer and smashed it to smithereens. Advertisers, at least based on this particular sample, seemed unwilling to discuss the philosophical pros and cons (or at least the cons) of their profession. I just wanted the whole evening to end as soon as possible.

My purpose here is not to reopen the debate. I use this story to illustrate an unfortunate human tendency. We live in a world of grays, but we like to think in black and white. I doubt that advertising is totally evil, but I also doubt that advertising is totally good. The truth lies between the two extremes; advertising is most likely a rather dirty gray.  If we’re willing to consider alternatives to our beliefs, perhaps it will move us a little closer to reality. I think advertising would do nothing but benefit from a deeper evaluation of its moral standing.

But we often forego a search for the truth, content to stick with our beliefs, which often bear little resemblance to reality. If those beliefs are attacked, we defend them vociferously, turning a deaf ear to counter-arguments. We don’t listen, because open minds require the burning of a lot of energy.

In a simpler evolutionary environment, beliefs were a heuristic shortcut for survival.  But today, they often polarize us at either end of a moral spectrum, with no middle ground left for discussion. Case in point, the current American political landscape.

I have spent most of my adult life trying to fight this natural tendency. I have tried to keep an open mind and not let my beliefs blind me to an opposing viewpoint — at least, not when it comes to those things I believe to be truly important. Morality, religion and politics are just three arenas where open minds are much harder to find than staunchly held beliefs.

And, apparently, you can add advertising to that list as well.

Meet My Underwood No. 5

First published May 30 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I collect typewriters. I don’t know why — I just do.

As I write this on a Bluetooth keyboard connected to an Apple Macbook, where the words I type appear on a screen through some magic of integrated circuitry and electrochemistry, I can’t help but cast envious glances at the 1923 Underwood No 5. Typewriter that sits on my credenza.

Now that is a piece of technology. It’s jam-packed with mechanical linkages and doodads that hint at wondrous functionality. It’s a machine built to do serious stuff. If I threw my Macbook through a window, there’s a 50/50 chance that no one would notice. It might not even break the glass. There’s a greater chance that no one would care. But if I throw that Underwood through a window, I’d be making a statement.

If you clicked on the link above, you’ll see that the Underwood didn’t want to hide its underbelly. Side windows and plenty of cutaways allow users to fully appreciate the almost 30 pounds of metallic integration that drove this particular typewriter. Nothing was hidden under the hood; it was all out there for everyone to see.  When you hit the carriage return, you unleashed a string of mechanical causes and effects that reminded you of a Rube Goldberg machine — like playing Mousetrap when you were a kid. There was no nuance about the Underwood. It was full-on industrial cleverness.

There was also no obsolescence built into this machine.  The heart of the mechanical workings came from a design introduced in 1896 that defined what typewriters would look like and how they would work for the next six decades, until the introduction of the IBM Selectric in the ‘60s.

Can you imagine introducing a new product today that would enjoy a 60-year run? Most of us would be happy with a 60-month run.  By the way, my typewriter, which has just turned 90, still works like a charm, thank you.  As far as I know, my typewriter and Betty White are the only two things that are still working at that age.

As I write this column on my more modern keyboard, the only outward sign that I’m working on anything is the muted “Apple-tick” of the keyboard, a discreet repetitive sound that falls somewhere between a quiet thud and a click.  It’s certainly nothing that would annoy the person in the next cubicle. Even with an office full of them, it sounds more like a gentle pattering of rain on a rooftop.

But fire up a steno pool full of Underwoods and you have a cacophony that literally screams productivity.  Typing a century ago was not for the faint of heart. It was a full-on sensory experience that you had to warm up for.  I, for one, remember typing class where the proper technique had to be drilled into you, preparing you for the sheer physicality required to effectively operate one of these machines. It was more basic training than user experience.

Why do I love typewriters? It’s certainly no practical reason. It’s pretty hard to file an online column written on an Underwood. I think, rather, that I love them because they remind me of a different time — a time when we were more muscular in our approach to technology. We were brasher, cockier and strived for permanence. We wanted to leaver a footprint that would last for decades, rather than cash out our startup in five years. We were not afraid to sweat a little bit to get ahead.

Or maybe it’s because it’s the only thing in my office older than I am.

The Momentum of Marketing

First published May 23, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

After becoming a parent, I discovered that there are no shortcuts to being a Dad. Contrary to popular belief, there’s no such thing as “quality time” with kids… there’s just time. You have to be there, as much as you can be, because you never know when those moments will occur that will cement your relationship with your children. You keep trying, you keep putting in the time, you keep doing the things you have to do to be a parent. Think of it as relationship “momentum.”

The same is true, I believe, in all worthwhile endeavors. Activity breeds success. And that includes marketing. If you take your foot off the gas, you lose momentum.

I’ve found that myself in the last few years. The marketing strategy of our company was all about activity. We conducted research, we published whitepapers, we blogged, we spoke at conferences, we held webinars — we never missed an opportunity to generate awareness. It was a lot of activity, aimed at maintaining our marketing momentum. And it worked. We had a profile in the industry that was probably out of proportion to our actual share of business. When it came to maintaining a profile, I think we punched above our weight.

I was the producer of much of this activity, so as our company profile rose, so did my own personal one. I was constantly fielding requests to speak, comment, participate or write.

But for various reasons, I’ve taken my foot off the gas recently. I’m not nearly as active in the industry as I was previously. My assumption was that the momentum would carry me for some period of time. I was wrong. The minute the activity decreased, so did the opportunities.

Now, this was partly by design. I knew that my previous industry profile would start to slip and so I didn’t panic. But still, I was surprised at how quickly it happened. And because of that, I suspect there’s a cautionary tale here for marketers. If you produce content or generate thought leadership, a hiatus can be costly. That lost momentum can take several months to build again. In fact, you might never get it back.

For myself, I’m now entering a new phase of my career, so my activity will change over the coming months. I still intend to be active — perhaps more so than ever — but it will be aimed in a new direction. I do have the advantage of past experience. I know it can work, because it has worked in the past.

So I leave you with these words of advice — be active in your marketing efforts. Always be producing new content, generating awareness, and raising your profile. I believe busy parents are generally good parents — and the same is true, I suspect, for marketers.

Reflections on Turning 400

First published January 24, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

So, this is my 400th column for Search Insider.

Of course, you’ll notice that recently, I’ve paid scant attention to the domain restrictions of the column’s title. In the past year, I’ve only written about search less than half the time.

Mediapost’s publisher, Ken Fadner, noticed this some time ago and offered me a slot on one of the other columns, like Online Spin, which is a bit more free-ranging in its topicality. But what can I say? I like my Thursday slot here on SI. I figure after nine years of writing about everything from evolutionary psychology to macroeconomics, you’ve come to expect a somewhat eclectic approach from me.

In part, I think the mix of topics you’ll find in my column is reflective of search. As I’ve always said, search acts as a connector in the online landscape. It stitches together our online experiences, as a foundational underpinning to the new digital world.

As such, I think it’s entirely appropriate that this column regularly bust out of the shackles of search marketing. The topics I’ve tackled over the past 400 columns really mark the evolution of my own personal interests, and with it, my career. This column has acted as my experimental petri dish, allowing me to incubate my little cell clusters of thoughts in the medium of public opinion.

In the next few months, that career will evolve once again. The company I started back in 1999, offering search engine optimization services, will fully transfer to a new owner. While I’ll still be involved in the world of online marketing in some form or another, I look forward to having the freedom to further develop some of the ideas that first saw the light of day in this column: from how humans have adapted to their new digital environments, to how organizations are struggling to adapt in a massively transformed marketplace, how disintermediation is stripping huge parts of our economic structure away, and how the very nature of strategic thinking is being transformed by ubiquitous data. My hope is that these ideas will eventually end up in book form.

Most of all, I have appreciated the forum this column has provided to share ideas. With the many changes the Internet has wrought, this is the most significant to me. The sharing of ideas, freely and openly, is something that can only benefit us.

For me, it’s a cycle. I seek out new ideas in the form of books I’ve read, academic studies or posts by my favorite bloggers. Then I digest them, weaving them into my own beliefs and perspective. Then, often still half-baked, I share them with you, hoping that something from this column may end up woven into your own tapestry of thought.

In that spirit, here’s the idea I would like to share with you today. I’m currently reading a fascinating book called “The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends who Transformed Science and Changed the World.” Author Laura Snyder explores the lives and careers of four friends who met at Cambridge as students in the early 1800s: Charles Babbage (inventor of the first “computer”); John Herschel (noted astronomer); William Whewell (polymath and professor); and Richard Jones (one of the creators of modern socioeconomic theory).

Jones, while one of the most original and insightful thinkers of his era, was not the most diligent of authors. Whewell would incessantly nag him to keep up with his writing. This passage came from one of Whewell’s many letters to Jones: “The only moral I can extract … is the importance of getting our speculations into such a form that not calamity nor adversity shall have the power, by putting an end to us… to destroy the chance of our beautiful theories coming before the world.”

You see, once you share your idea, it’s no longer bound by your own mortality. What better incentive could you find to keep writing every Thursday?

The Berkowitz Guide to Creating Content that Matters

First published September 6, 2012 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I made it! I got through the summer without writing too many “filler” columns triggered by the realization it was already Wednesday and my editor was expecting something in her inbox by end of day. There were no summer vacation columns, no “10 things I learned about [fill in blank],” and with the exception of one column about the joy of digging holes, no lame reminiscing about the zillion years I’ve spent doing this. Sometimes I even managed to write about search.

Of course, now that we’re safely past Labor Day, all that comes to a crashing halt. Because, yet again, it’s Wednesday (as of the time I’m writing) and, yet again, the well is dry.  So, it was sad yet somehow consoling that I read the final column of David Berkowitz, the one MediaPost writer I know who has actually logged more columns (400) than I (383 as of this one). David recapped what’s he’s learned from writing a little over 300,000 words, squeezed out every week over the past eight years. As David so astutely says, “I know not every post is amazing, but I still put in the time. It takes just as long to write an average column as it does to write a great one.”

I would urge you to take the time to read David’s column. I’ve been talking a lot lately about the importance of content creation. In the new information economy, content is currency. We all have to start thinking like publishers. And that means that many of us will have to create content. David’s lessons are valuable ones.

One of the thing’s I’ve most admired about David is his ability to write both from his heart and his head. He has a keen intellect, but he’s also a good and decent person, and both qualities shine through in his writing. Being genuine is an often-overlooked gift.

Whatever forms your content takes, make sure you’re creating it for the right reasons. Speak because you have something to say, not just to fill a room (or blog post) with noise. I especially liked David’s Lesson #2: “Big ideas matter, even if they don’t spread.” The columns I’m most proud of are often the ones that got the fewest retweets or comments.

Long ago, when I started writing and speaking, I had to come to terms with the fact that I will seldom go “viral.” I don’t seem to have a flair for creating memes.

But after watching other speakers who are more “meme”-worthy get swarmed after a presentation while I stood quietly to the side, I began to notice a pattern. Often, someone would come up and say, “Thank you so much for what you talked about. It was a different angle and it gave me something to think about.” I decided then and there that it was these individuals I was writing and presenting for. There may be only a handful of them in the room, or reading my column on any given week, but if I can pass along something that causes them to adjust their perspective and see something that was previously undiscovered, it’s been worth it. Retweets are not always the best measure of importance.

Writing should never be a “to-do” task. Yes, the weekly rhythm of this column can frankly be a pain in the butt some days when my to-do list overflows —  but that feeling always goes away when I start writing. As David said, “Each column is a learning experience, starting with a thesis, or a hypothesis, or a half-decent idea for the middle of a nonexistent story.”

Yes, writing is a learning experience, forcing you to put some semblance on structure to half-formed thoughts, but it’s also a chance each week to learn a little bit more about yourself. I like to think of writing as sharing little shards of your soul. You put yourself out there in a way that few others do.

At least, you do if you write as well as Mr. Berkowitz does.

A Cyclist’s Farewell

First published July 12, 2012 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This past Sunday, I spent the day riding a bike 100 miles through searing 95-degree heat in Canada’s only desert. Bet you didn’t even realize Canada has a desert, did you? Well, we do. Trust me. And it’s freaking hot. After about 60 miles, I was ready to pack it in and grab a beer. But I gutted it out for another 40 miles, because that’s what cycling is about: gutting it out.

Just to put my accomplishment in humbling perspective, in the Tour de France, cyclists cover over 2,200 miles in 21 days, averaging somewhere around 110 miles a day. And they do it over some of the toughest climbs on the European continent and still have enough left to attack at the end.

If you’ve never ridden a long distance, you can’t fully appreciate how mind-boggling it is that these guys have enough left in their legs to sprint across the finish line. You can’t win the Tour without gutting it out. Luck plays a huge role, both positively and negatively (just ask Giro d’Italia champion Ryder Hesjedal, who got caught in a crash and had to withdraw), but at the end of tour, it’s the gutsiest performer who will prevail. I love cycling because it matches my personality: putting your head down and slogging it through to the finish line.

I give you this preamble because last week, the world of search marketing lost a very gutsy guy who also happened to be a cyclist.

I met Ron Jones when we both served on the board of SEMPO. I never really knew Ron that well, but within moments of meeting, we were both talking about cycling. That’s another thing you’ll learn about cyclists. It’s kind of like a secret handshake. We recognize each other immediately and then bore everyone else to tears talking about our favorite bikes (I ride a Trek, but damn those Pinarellos look fine), our favorite ride (aforesaid ride through the desert with none other than the incomparable Eddy Merckx), our own near-death experience (every cyclist has one) or our preferred brand of chamois butter (don’t ask).

Ron had all the earmarks of a serious cyclist: quiet determination, passion, drive and a ready smile. Ron had guts. He could go the distance — and he did, in pretty much every aspect of his life. He was a driving force in the world of search, founding his own successful agency, writing a book and always giving back to the greater SEM community. He was a consummate family man. I never met his family, but you couldn’t talk to Ron long before the subject of his wife Tracey and his four kids came up.  He was a mainstay in his church and community.

Yep, Ron knew how to gut it out and get it done.

But as I said, luck has a big part to play here as well. In Ron’s case, it was luck of the worst kind: a diagnosis of cancer. I haven’t seen Ron for a few years, so I learned about his passing from an email that went out to past members of the SEMPO board who were fortunate enough to have served with Ron.

I was devastated.

Ron was vital and alive and vibrant. He was a contributor. He was one of the great guys that cause you to smile automatically when you mention his name, because you hold the memory so fondly. It’s circumstances like this that cause you to say, “@#$%#, that’s not fair!”

I don’t know how Ron’s battle went. I wasn’t there for the climbs and descents. I don’t know how often he “bonked” on the way to the finish line. But I do know this. Ron gutted it out. He finished like the champion he was. And now, he’s got the wind at his back.

As part of this weekend’s ride, I got a souvenir shirt. I’m actually wearing it right now. On the front it says, “Ride Hard. Smile Often.”

That pretty much describes Ron Jones. He will be missed.