Monthly Archives: January 2010

Why do people talk purple prose?

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OK.  It’s Saturday evening, snow’s falling, I’m caffeinated up on tea and chocolates and have just watched a ‘Quantum of Solace’ on TV.   When I first wrote the title for this piece I have to say that the title of this piece changed from one that involved Anglo-Saxon expletives through to the mild sentence you now read.  So, what has made my bile rise to the tip of my tongue?  What horror have I seen inflicted on the world that has driven me to put fingers to keyboard?  It’s purple prose like this:

” … is a builder, a transformer. He cherishes the electricity and challenge of growing and leading a team in the pursuit of audacious goals. The more daunting the mountain, the more exciting the adventure.”

Are we talking about an oil-field trouble-shooter?  A leader of intrepid explorers?  Captain of Earth’s first Interstellar Spacecraft?  No.  It’s a marketing fellow.  Now, if this works for him and his business, so be it.  But come on folks, be honest.  Do we really go around talking to each other like this?  Should we go around talking to each other like this?

I’m not totally free of this sort of thing myself – my own CV features:

To make full use of my unique range of IT and management skills and interests to develop technically advanced information systems that provide business advantage to users. […snip… ]As well as my technical ability, my written and verbal communication skills, project management expertise, team leading, mentoring and management skills allow me to make a consistently valuable contribution to any IT project.

It’s not perfect, but it does say what my professional services supply.  I’m not climbing mountains or fording mighty rivers; I’m doing stuff with computers and management consultancy, for crying out loud.  Don’t get me wrong – a Mission Statement is a valuable tool when phrased appropriately and meaningfully.  One excellent definition of a Mission Statement I’ve come across is:

To provide one simple, singular directive that can serve as a guidepost to solve any problems that emerge.

– the Mission Statement becomes a compass for your life or your business.  I have a personal one (and personal it shall stay!) that I use to try and keep me on the straight and narrow.  Keeping it simple and straight forward, whilst encapsulating the core values that you want to live and / or work by is crucial.  The woolier the prose is, the more purple the writing, the more ‘wriggle room’ there is in your Mission Statement and the less valuable it is at providing that ‘compass’ when things get tough.

My favourite Mission Statement (Well…maybe more of a statement of intent…)  is still from the film ‘The Mummy’ – “Kill the creature, save the girl”. 

And the heroes do exactly what it says on the tin; no wriggle-room, just get on with the job.

Blogging the Party Line?

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parliamentIncendiary political blogger Guido Fawkesmade an interesting observation the other day that the Left are once again saying that 2010 will be their year to dominate the Blogosphere in a run up to an election and beyond.    As he points out, they’ve also said this in 2007, and I remember similar thoughts being voiced when Labour first started playing with computers for campaigning back in the 1980s (as an ‘Old Labour’ member I was involved with Computing For Labour for a while, on and off up to my exit from the party in 1996).

The article started me thinking about the whole business of political blogging.  Just to provide a quick view of where I personally come from politically…. I come from the left, but have found myself for the last decade inhabiting the territory of the Libertarian.  I’ll get the joke out of the way now ‘Being a Libertarian is like being a Liberal; you can come up with lots of ‘out there’ policies because you’ll never have to bear the responsibility of putting them in to action’ 🙂  My own take on Libertarianism is minimum Government, maximum possible empowerment of communities to provide services locally, with national Government providing only the necessary services and infrastructure that it would be inefficient for local communities to provide. On a personal basis I try to practice what I preach by involving myself in local organisations and efforts to develop local economies and local structures of service provision.

Enough about me – back to the blogging.  When a party member blogs they almost by definition need to watch what they say if they intend to adhere to the Party Line.  Whilst this may not be important for the ‘rank and file’, if you’re anyone with influence or position in the Party, stating anything that is not doctrine will probably get you a slap on the wrist (or a boot up the bottom) from the powers that be, especially when it is viewed as being important for all to be singing from the same hymn sheet.  Which frequently makes a political blog by ‘well known’ politicians as interesting as reading excerpts from the Manifesto document of that party.  It’s highly unlikely you’ll find anything truly radical and rare that you’ll find anything that confronts the existing status quo within the Party. 

My own attitude towards political blogging is to pay more attention to the more ‘independent thinkers’ outside the mainstream political parties, and also pay more attention to the ideas irrespective of who posts them.  Politics isn’t about politicians or political bloggers, spin-doctors, media pundits or journalists; they just practice the business that modern mainstream politics has become.  So, my advice would be to treat most blogs by ‘professional’ politicians as marketing efforts for the brand they’re working for.  As for the other political blogs – go for ’em!  Try them out, whether you agree or disagree with their viewpoint.  It’s ideas that are important, not which doctrine they come from.  There’s a good list of Political Blogs compiled by Iain Dale here.

Real Politics is about our day to day lives, and how we are permitted to live them – whether that permission comes in terms of laws, resources, money, media influence.  The old labels are becoming just that – labels on political product that is less and less relevant.  Perhaps the real winners in the political blogosphere for 2010 will be ‘none of the above’ but the ‘Real Politics’ blog posts of the rest of us.

The Social Media Numbers Game

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twitter-logoI’m old enough to have used an address book and still have a Rolodex on the phone table.  When I actually sit down and think about the people with whom I have reasonably regular ‘quality’ contact in a 3 month period, either electronically or face to face, it probably amounts to no more than a hundred or so.  I guess it’s safe to say that in the world of networking I’m a ‘quality over quantity’ sort of fellow.  I’ve never been a great collector of large numbers of business cards or people details – collections are fine for stamps, coins and locomotive numbers but are kind of creepy for people. 🙂

Back in the late 1990s / early 2000s I used a networking site called Ecademy – I stopped after a while because it seemed that people were making contact with you purely from a sales oriented viewpoint.  Allow me to explain – if I’m interested in AI, and someone brings something to my attention that’s even vaguely related to the field – that’s cracking!  That’s exactly what I’m there for – and hopefully I’ll be able to reciprocate.  On the other hand, if someone steams in with a ‘Hi, I’m Fred, I’m in marketing, blah, blah, blah’ I get the feeling I’m receiving a boilerplate message which is likely to end up as a boiler room selling attempt.  The site seemed to encourage numbers of contacts over quality – and that’s one of the reasons why I eventually jacked it in.

I’ve noticed in recent days that I’m being followed by people who are following thousands of others.  And the odd thing is most of them appear to be selling something that is as relevant to me as a comb to Sir Patrick Stewart.  The ‘Bio’ of one such follower (soon to be ex-follower in my daily purge) – “A Business Dedicated to providing free online MLM training videos, articles, books and webinars”.  If I received an email like this I’d call it spam – pure and simple.  I know that Twitter has policies around spam, but my point is that most folks following 20,000 people seem to be in the MLM, ‘sales and marketing’, ‘social media consultancy’ sort of areas.  They’re cold calling – they sure ain’t networking.

Bottom line – there is NO WAY, realistically, that the content generated by the 20,000 people these bods follow is ever registering in any meaningful manner with these people – I assume it’s simply being harvested electronically and searched for keywords that might suggest a sales lead. 

Joe’s categorisation of Twitter users…

  1. Vast number of followers, smallish number of followed – publisher / celeb.
  2. Vast number of followers, vast number of followed – probably sales / mass marketing
  3. Smallish followers, large number of followed – probably spammer
  4. Smallish followers / smallish followed – personal / business networking

OK – it’s not a brilliant classification but it works for me.  Just watch out if you’re in category 2 or 3 ‘cos I’m binning you!

 Whilst I was drafting this yesterday, I came across this piece on the same topic:  http://juliorvarela.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/when-twitter-numbers-are-meaningless/

Don’t get too hung up on your numbers on Twitter.  If you’re following lots of people, just check WHY.  Do they add value to your day?  Amuse / entertain you?  Educate you?  Guide or enlighten you?  If not, ditch ’em.  And those following you – just take a look at their numbers and think about what I’ve said.

And I hope you don’t chuck me off your lists. 🙂