A few months ago I relocated to New York City from Phoenix. Of course, to make that happen I needed to find a job. But this was an adventure that required much more than “a job.” I’m a passionate guy that was hell-bent on finding an opportunity that meshed with that passion. This was incredibly hard work.

Each night I would return home from working a full day and get right to work making contacts and connections in New York. Very little of my time was actually spent on job boards. I was committed to only reaching out to organizations that share my passions and have developed the kind of culture I’m looking for, even if they weren’t hiring. It was like attending school after work, only worse. It was often frustrating, rarely gratifying, and always exhausting.

Throughout the process I received a lot of advice, much of it insightful and helpful, some not. One thing that’s regularly discussed is creating your own “brand.” Something that gives an organization a glimpse into your background, experience and outlook beyond the traditional materials. It’s something I’ve worked hard to craft. But throughout the process I was reminded that even as the job seeker, the power of brands works both ways.

In my search I looked at every nuance, read every article, and explored every department. In essence, I explored their brand the same way they would mine. Yet just as something can instantly disqualify me, it did for them too.

For example, while still in Phoenix I had an interview scheduled with a prominent NYC marketing company. It was an introductory interview with an HR representative simply to get to know each other rather than to discuss a specific opening. Becoming familiar with the organiztion was as important to me as them.

The call was to happen at an agreed upon time where I would call. So I called. No answer. I waited a few minutes, called again, left a message and waited for a response. Nothing. No big deal. Surely something came up that was far more important than my introductory interview. So I sent an email expressing those sentiments. Nothing. A week later I emailed and called a couple more times, reached out on Twitter (which is active by the way) and still no response. Nothing. Not even a “leave us alone we’re no longer interested.” So what does that say about your brand?

What it says to me, the hungry yet strategic (and valuable) job hunter, is that your company is no longer a place I’d like to work. That’s not how I do business and if that’s how you do business than we’re not the match I thought. Is this actually what the company is all about? Probably not. But it goes to show the power one person can have on your brand.

The worst part is that great organizations who treat people this way are probably missing out on great talent. There’s no sour grapes here - I’m fine and have since found a perfect situation. But this, like everything else in this journey, has been a powerful lesson that I’ll take with me the rest of my life.

It’s Social Media Day today! A day for marketers everywhere to revel in the industry that made us all experts. I’m so excited that I’m going to carve out an extra hour to read through the same article written a hundred different ways. Can somebody point to the best “Top Ten Ways to Celebrate Social Media Day” post?

Picking up the sarcasm? I hope so because the last thing this industry needs is another reason to celebrate itself. It’s what we do better than any group outside of politicians or NBA free agents.

Unfortunately, this day will be spent by the social media crowd pimping things as opposed to working together to better the industry. A quick search of the Twitter hashtag “#smday” proves this point.

My wish for “Social Media Day?” Instead of individually and organizationally celebrating our excellence, we collectively gather to admit how little we actually understand about the “social” part of our jobs.

All of us in this industry have proven how hard we’re willing to work to carve our niche. If we worked that hard to actually be social in our efforts we’d accomplish incredible things that better the marketing experience from client to organization to consumer.

Mashable defines “Social Media Day” as “a day to celebrate the revolution of media becoming social.” Next year, to make good on that definition, “Social Media Day” should be about celebrating specific campaigns or efforts that demonstrate their social success. Instead of today which is just another opportunity for us to claim our expertise. We have enough of that already. 365 days in fact.

Leave it to an artist to put together a great social campaign.

“Play me, I’m yours” is officially titled a “touring artwork” and was developed by British artist, Luke Jerram. It’s a simple idea. Starting today, 60 pianos will be situated throughout New York City available to be played by any and all that pass by. The campaign is presented by “Sing for Hope,” an organization looking to mobilize artists in volunteer efforts.

Not only is the concept cool and sure to generate tremendous interest on site but there’s also a website where you can easily track the location of the pianos and upload your stories, pictures, video, etc. Jerram and the campaign team know the real power comes with the story, not the technology so they’ve built a movement on the ground that inspires social media participation online.

All involved could have taken the easy route and created a Facebook page or social media space with all the bells and whistles. Instead, they’re giving people a reason to take to social media to share their offline experience. In my book, that’s a real social experience.

The Internet is obviously hugely important in marketing efforts, especially as it relates to social media.

Today, a new study emerged citing that online communication continues to grow and influence offline Word of Mouth. At first glance the study does a lot to demonstrate this:

• “The Intnernet has become more influential than TV in driving conversations about brands”
• “The best vehicles for influencing WOM come from consumers in social networks”

But the most notable statistics are those sure to appear in social media presentations around the world in mere moments. Those include:

• “7% of all WOM brand conversations happen online”
• “38% of people who have brand WOM conversations both online and off are influenced by the Internet.”
• “The internet had a 17% impact on WOM conversations about finance compared with TV at 8%.”

The stats go on and on from there. To their credit, the study authors do note the significance of in person WOM but that stat is buried deep within the article written by Online Media Daily.

It’s amazing how good we’ve become as an industry at avoiding the obvious. Rather than tackle the challenge of understanding how to effectively reach the overwhelmingly larger group, we bury, ignore, and justify.

This article (and study) could have had a significantly different impact had it simply been reshaped. Imagine the statistics above had been written:

• “93% of all WOM brand conversations happen offline”
• 62% of people who have brand WOM conversations both online and off are NOT influenced by the Internet

Would that change anything? I hope so but I have my doubts. I think it’s high time we start looking at things for what they really are. Social media is incredibly powerful and effective when done strategically and kept in the proper perspective. What are you doing to reach the majority?

(This is long and I apologize)

At what point do we stop acting like we’re actually doing social media? How about now? It’s not too soon to turn this ship around.

I’ve had the priveldge of being involved in this social media thing since the beginning and it’s been mighty interesting to watch the whole thing evolve. Mainly, it’s been interesting to watch marketing people scramble to jump on board, carve their niche, figure out how to make money, and run afoul of the entire practice.

Five or so years later, (all of you that say you’ve been doing social media for a decade are ridiculous and don’t count) what all of this has amounted to is a bunch of really smart people, a bunch of really dumb people, and all the rest of us building up a stockpile of ego and bullshit so high we’ve completely lost sight of what we were trying to do in the first place.

Let’s break it down. YouTube celebrated its fifth anniversary this year. Remember when you were amazed by watching old episodes of In Living Color? YouTube is still great because of the amount of content and the legitimately interesting stuff you can’t find anywhere else - concert clips, old shows, people falling down, Ricky Gervais and Elmo. The stuff that sucks on YouTube is the marketing crap we in the field do our best to make stand out or worse, “go viral.” Thankfully YouTube is so big we have at least another five years before we defile it completely.

Twitter? Holy shit where do I start? I’m in the social media field and Twitter finally became valuable when I stopped following my peers (most of them anyway). I know, I’m not following the right people right? Turns out I am and their names are @the-real_nash and @BPGlobalPR, not the 15,740 social media experts. After a couple of years Twitter still hasn’t proven itself to be a widely valueable marketing tool. That won’t stop us though. We’ll keep broadcasting noise and counting impressions because that’s what we do.

Facebook? We’re trying so hard to screw up the single best communication tool since the telephone that it’s CEO is on the verge of a heart attack at 14. This whole privacy thing. Whose fault do you really think that is? Facebook? Hardly. It’s the marketing people who smelled blood from the get go.

I could go on forever but I’ll finish with blogs. A few years ago the everyman finally had a voice. It changed everything from journalism to pop culture but at it’s best blogging finally made companies and marketers accountable. It went from, “Fuck the consumer they’ll still by our shit” to “Fuck you company, you suck, here’s why, and now I’m going to tell all my friends.” Companies listened, marketers listened and the world was better. Then some asshole marketer said, “But what if we pay her?” Well this is America afterall so now we have “mommy bloggers.”

Don’t get me wrong, there are a number of people, groups and companies doing incredible things with social media and I admire them greatly. They’re an inspiration for their commitment to the space. But I’ve found that commitment is always rooted in the passion that drew to the space in the first place - connecting people. Sounds simple, but we RARELY do it in social media. We talk about it a lot but RARELY do it. Be accountable. Ask yourself when the last time you actually made a connection between your brand and its audience was. If your answer goes to RT’s or impressions than you haven’t and you’re certainly not practicing social media.

Most of us are in this field because the other shit bored us. We’re turning this into a bore too. Let’s fix this now. It’s actually pretty easy. Stop calling what you’re doing social media and put it back in it’s right category - PR, advertising, etc and be proud of what you do. Or make the commitment to do more than RT, count impressions, and blog numbered lists and build a sound strategy that uses these great tools to make connections and build relationships.

We got ourselves into this mess. Now let’s get ourselves out.