Author: Mike

Twitter was never a social network to me. I mean, sure, I made and had friends there. And I interacted with reporters, analysts, and influencers. But it was first and foremost a newsfeed. A wire service of industry and world news. A place to spot trends and stay on top of breaking events. It was RSS on ‘roids.

And then it imploded.

How do you replicate that river of news? It’s not like journalists stopped producing news. For some of us old timers, RSS fills some of that void. But it’s not the same. Many have migrated to the fediverse to maintain as much of those Twitter connections as possible. But it’s not the same, either. Twitter was different.

The fediverse shows promise as a Twitter replacement, but it’s likely too byzantine for a generation raised on walled-garden technologies. But it’s what we’ve got today. So how do we use it to fill the Twitter void? I’m just spitballing here, but I could envision someone cranking up a Mastodon instance just for technology new outlets to let their publishing bots run free. An instantaneous RSS feed, if you will. I’m sure others also have ideas (sound off in the comments).

The scale of technology is shifting, the weight transferring from random algorithms and advertising to individual control of the bits and bytes one puts out into the world. It’ll be messy. It’ll take time. But make no mistake, it’s happening.

I stumbled on an interview with actor Jon Hamm that perfectly encapsulates the power of saying yes has on opening opportunities in your life and why not everything can or should be measured.

“Mostly I drive [my agents] crazy because I say yes to everything, you know? I’m always showing up for people’s podcasts or what have you,” Hamm continued. “But that’s what I like doing. I like engaging with the people that I work with and I’ve had some tremendous, fun experiences doing that. And things like that turn into other things. And, you know, those are the kinds of things you can’t measure.”

Saw a great LinkedIn post by Joe Brockmeier about being more human in corporate writing. It’s something I’ve told execs throughout my career: Just be human. It’s that simple.

• Use words that are part of your own dictionary, not a corporate thesaurus.
• Tempted to use an acronym? Don’t.
• Excited? Pleased? Dismayed? Don’t tell me; show me. Words are meant to be colorful. Paint me a picture with them.
• Don’t want to swear, but still want to show emotion? Drop a heckuva instead of a helluva into your press release quote.
• For the love of Hemingway, tell stories. We ain’t buying ink anymore, folks. Spin the yarns. Humans love stories. We have since we were listening to them by the fire inside caves.
• Got bad news to talk about? Before you put a finger to keyboard, put yourself in the shoes of the person you are writing to. Sympathy and empathy are your friends.
• Writing some form of corporate announcement (or anything, for that matter)? Write it so someone not in your industry understands what you are talking about in the first paragraph.

Let your human flag fly!