Peter G McDermott

Blog

  • What are you known for?

    talk to the experts by Mai Le is licensed under CC BY 2.0

    Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday serves as a great day to ask yourself, “what are you known for?”

    No, we won’t all move mountains. We won’t all change the course of human history. We won’t all make it into the history books, but we all have the opportunity to make a change in the world. It can be something small, something big, or something that only affects a single person.

    Regardless of what you want to be in the world or what you want to do, people will always associate you with certain things. If you work with them, they might just see you as a co-worker, if you bowl with them, they might just see you as a bowling partner, if you do great things though, they might see you for your accomplishments.

    One of my biggest struggles as I have created my personal brand identity, is to figure out exactly what I want people to think of me as. Do I want to be a SEO expert? Nah. A community management expert? Maybe. A social media guru? Definitely not. A storyteller? Probably.

    The challenge of trying to define yourself as a topical expert of one particular niche is important if you want to be a known authority for that particular subject. But, what if you’re like me and you’re interests are all over the place? What if you love consumer electronics, but also have advice for how small businesses can better use social media to attract new customers? What if you like debating issues like social media platform design and application user experience?

    Can you truly be the master of anything if you enjoy so many different things?

    I have been watching quite a few characters on Google+ recently, and I’m starting to notice a trend. The people that are regarded as topical experts post a lot about their given topic. However, a large number of them seem to cross over, post and comment on things that might be tangential to their focus, but not necessarily their blockbuster topic.

    The bottom line, though is these people always return to what they do best, and because of that, they are known for that. +Mark Traphagen is on top of everything related to Authorship in SERPs. +Ronnie Bincer knows every technical aspect of Google+ Hangouts, Hangouts on Air and YouTube interface. +David Amerland has established himself as an expert on semantic search while +Dustin W. Stout  is leading the wave on fresh, purposeful content and engagement. Need to know anything about Google+ on the whole? +Denis Labelle and a slew of others likely have you covered. Android news? +Derek Ross is all over it.

    These examples are people that have chosen to focus, and because of their focus, they are rewarded with being known for their focus. Those of us that chose to be interdisciplinary won’t achieve the same recognition of these individuals, and won’t stand out in a crowd for being the best at any one particular thing.

    By diversifying your interests, you have the ability to learn so much about so many different things. However, in doing so, you can sometimes sacrifice the opportunity to be known as an expert. Regardless, though, how important is it to be known as an expert of one particular thing?

    As I look to shift my career, I’m learning that ambition is no match for hard work and years of experience. Hiring managers and companies looking for consultants don’t just want someone that knows what they’re talking about, they want someone that can prove that they have consistently performed. These individuals, by choosing their focus and continuing to teach and share have done exactly that.

    For the rest of the year, I am going to be asking myself, “what am I known as?” But until I figure it out, maybe you can help, what do you know me as?

  • To Share +1's or Not to Share +1's

    Yesterday I was perusing my stream on Google+ when I noticed that +Dustin W. Stout had +1’d a post by +Taylor Swift. Now, I couldn’t help but think it was out of place for someone as savvy as Dustin to broadcast his interaction on a post with a mega celebrity that doesn’t have much at all to do with his realm (being awesome at the Internet).

    When I privately alerted Dustin of what I thought must have been a mistake, something that he had overlooked, I got a reply that made me totally reconsider the way I thought about sharing +1’s.

    Within minutes of seeing Dustin’s reply, I noticed this post in my stream by +Chris Jenkins that had been “vetted” by +Mark Traphagen, +Derek Ross and +Eli Fennell (three people that I highly admire).

    Prior to the screen capture, I didn’t have +Chris Jenkins in my circles. In fact, if the three people that I trust so much hadn’t +1’d the post and had their accounts enabled to show +1 recommendations, I never would have seen the post appear in my stream.

    When the +1 broadcast feature was initially released, it was met with two schools of thought. One was that those that decided to turn the broadcast on, would either self-censor themselves or “over-share” and possibly +1 things that didn’t fit their brand or niche. The other school of thought was that by enabling the feature, you would allow your followers to be open to a whole new world of content and creative people.

    Sadly, at the time of the release, I bought into the first theory. I didn’t want to censor myself by changing the way that I 1+ content. I wanted to +1 whatever the heck I wanted to, and not worry about someone else seeing it appear in their stream. I wanted to show everyone I was following that I was listening.

    I guess at a certain point in your Internet presence, that school of thought is okay. But, with a large audience comes a bit of responsibility (at least in my mind) which is why I think I should take the opportunity to share what I find interesting with the rest of my followers. Starting today, I’m going to think about what I really enjoy reading, watching and engaging with. As I find things those things, I think it’s time to reward the people that took the time and effort to create and share those things.

    Thanks, +Dustin W. Stout, for making me change the way I think.

  • How to Get a New Phone for Free

    As a technology enthusiast, I always like to have the latest and greatest devices. However, keeping up with the latest tech can be an expensive addiction.

    Although most of us are only eligible to upgrade or trade-out our smartphones every year or two, there are a ton of things you can do with your current device to make it seem like a whole new phone.

    Thanks to operating system updates (Android Jelly Bean/KitKat, iOS 5) software developers deliver a periodic fresh new look and feel to our hardware while showering us with new and innovative features. But, beyond that, there are a bunch of things we can do to declutter of phones and make them work for us.

    Just the other day I was trying to record a video on my Samsung Galaxy S III when I realized that the audio quality was horrible. I returned the device to the store where they swapped it out for a refurbished model. Some of you might think that carrying a Galaxy S III puts me way behind the times, but when you think about it, I have most of the features of the newest smartphone, but with the added ability of having removable storage and swappable batteries (something you cannot do with the Google Nexus or iPhone).

    A Factory Reset can breathe new life into your phone. Over time your device gets worn down by tons of applications, widgets and background processes that can chew through your data plan and your battery consumption without you even knowing it. Within a few months your device can get slow, bogged down and just not as fresh and fast as it was out of the box.

    By backing up all of your contacts, photos, videos and apps (best done by using a Google account to store your contacts and Autobackup to store your photos and videos) you can easily reset your phone and get a fresh start in just a few minutes. The advantages of doing this are that you can review the apps on your phone, how you have your home screen configured and make your phone what you want it to be.

    Take time to organize your device. By putting the apps and contacts that you use most at your fingertips, you will find that using your phone efficiently can save you a ton of time and extra thumb presses. As you can see from my updated home screen, I’ve put all of the things that I use most in my system tray. That way, as soon as I unlock my phone with one or two taps, I can get exactly what I need.

    One of the annoying default settings of most phones is that when you install an app, it automatically places an icon for that app on one of your home screens. This can be really frustrating with Android, as it will just crowd your unused space with icons. By turning off that option, you can take control of what you want to keep on your home screens.

    Use widgets to take a quick glance. Sorry iOS users, this one is only for Android. By using multiple home screens and some of the great widgets available, you can quickly browse the information you need from your favorite or most used app without having to load it each time.

    Sorting your applications into folders can also help you quickly find what you’re looking for without trying to recite the alphabet each time you’re looking for an app.
    Functionality trumps design (at least for me). Most of the time, when I see people post screen captures from their phones, I see beautiful background images and aesthetically pleasing icons and clocks, but what I don’t see is functionality. When I pull my phone out of my pocket, I want to complete a task as quickly as possible. Whether it is making a call to a love one (I use favorites in Phone), launching an app (sorted by folders) or glancing at my calendar or e-mail (widgets), I like to keep my phone set up to work for me and make my life easier. After all, that’s why we spend some much on this technology, to make our lives simpler.
    After resetting your phone, reorganizing your apps and ridding your phone of the ones you never need, giving yourself a new background/lock screen, you’ll feel like you have a brand new device. The best part? It was all completely free.
    If you have tips on how to make your phone work for you or how you give yourself an Android makeover, leave them in the comments below. I’d love to see what you’re doing to make your phone even better!

  • The Mythology of Shared Circles

    Brocken experiment, Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13579 / CC-BY-SA

    A long time ago, when +Google+ was just a protostar, people relied on shared circles to tell who was active on the network and who was not. If you were new to Google+, at the time the “stream” showed everyone that was actively posting, not just the people that you had circled. As the network grew, people needed a way to keep track of the people that were active so they could narrow down their stream. During this time, the use of shared circles was very common, however it was necessary.

    As time went on and Google+ started to become a star, circles were less about just who was “active” and more about specific interests and topics. A lot of people used them to help discover new users that were excited to grow an audience, but most of those attempts were extremely organic.

    I, like +Mike Elgan, +Robert Scoble, and others, worked on creating carefully curated circles that contained people specific to a certain set of interests. Mike’s best one yet, was the #BlogsofAugust  circle that introduced me to some great people, but Robert’s Circle of 500 Bloggers put so many Google+ early adopters in front of hundreds of new followers. Later on, I would go on to create an “Original Content Creators” circle which featured people that were sharing their own genuine content.

    I didn’t want to jump into this argument and say that unfocused shared circles are bad, because that would be hypocritical. We definitely used them in the infant stages of the network. However, the ones referenced in this post are a different breed. They aren’t about the people in them, but the person benefiting from them, which is the person hawking them. If you’ve ever been pitched for an MLM, hen you know exactly how these circles work. You’ll never get the Bentley or the private jet, but if you keep on trying, you will only help the person at the top to go further.

    The image above is of the Brocken experiment by British physic researcher Harry Price.

    “In 1932, Price travelled to Mount Brocken in Germany with C. E. M. Joad and members of the National Laboratory to conduct a ‘black magic‘ experiment in connection with the centenary of Goethe, involving the transformation of a goat into a young man. The “Bloksberg Tryst”, involving the transformation of a goat into a young man by the invocation of a maiden, Ura Bohn (better known as the film actress Gloria Gordon), produced a great deal of publicity but not the magical transformation. Price claimed he carried out the experiment “if only to prove the fallacy of transcendental magic.” – Wikipedia

    The true magic of a shared circle, is one that is carefully curated, focused and limited to those who are truly engaging and consistent content creators. I encourage each and every one of you to curate several of these circles throughout your time on Google+ and share them with your audience to help others discover the great things out there.

    These “other” circles, the “Mega Ball” and the “+1 and reshare to be included” circles are akin to the Brocken Experiment. No matter how well you advertise it, and how hard you try, you simply can’t turn a goat into a young scholarly man. In fact, when you think about it, the whole idea is just plain silly.

  • The Importance of Sharing

    The hardest part about sharing is finding the courage to do it.

    We spend so much time during our petty existence worrying about our image. Some of us worry about sharing too much, sharing things that are too personal, or sharing things that others may not like. We feel that we have a duty to ourselves to create and preserve a certain image from which others will perceive us.

    Although creating boundaries and maintaining a positive image are admirable traits, by censoring yourself, you deny yourself the opportunity to share your most important thing, you perspective. As I said on a recent post, no one can see the world like you do.

    Two of the most important books that I always keep on my bookshelf are Life’s Journeys and The World According to Mister Rogers. Now, I know it may sound childish to some of you, but the concepts that Mister Rogers taught me at such a young age will forever shape who I am as a person.

    One of my favorite passages from The World According to Mister Rogers is this,

    “Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort.”

    Each of us has a unique story to tell. Our perception of the world is shaped by the people with interact with, the situations we were born from the actions that we take throughout our life. As we continue to absorb more information, our decisions change over time. With the more knowledge that we accumulate, the better we are to reason, question and ponder issues that will shape the future for generations before us.

    No matter what your opinion, whether it is left, right, or straight down the middle, you will never make an impact unless you share your thoughts and ideas. When we collaborate and exchanges these thoughts and ideas, we learn more about ourselves and apply the knowledge to making better decisions.

    By sharing, you are giving someone else information that could completely change the way they see things. By sharing, you have the power to help people better understand themselves and the issues that we face in our overly complicated world today.

    As you embark on the journey of sharing, you quickly learn things about yourself. You start to pay more attention to your inner dialog, you get a better understanding for the way that you think and process ideas. As you start to share these ideas, the transmission of them becomes much more fluent, and much more comfortable.

    When you decide that censoring yourself, trying to preserve some artificial sense of anonymity or convince yourself that you can make an impact, it is finally time to tell your story.

    Your story will develop over time. You will say things at one point that you will later disagree with. Each day, week, month, year and decade you will accumulate new information and a better understanding for the things you ponder every day. These experiences and this additional knowledge will shape your thoughts and perspective and allow you to paint a more complete picture later in your life.

    However, as you learn and experience new things, it is incredibly important to challenge them, debate them and think about them. Expressing them openly is a great way to encourage others to discuss these matters with you. From those discussions you will form great relationships, some bonds which will last a lifetime, others which will whither away. However, from sharing your thoughts, your ideas, your arguments, your hypotheses and your experiences, you will allow someone else to see the world through your eyes.

    The more perspectives that you are willing to view and the more shoes you are willing to try on, the greater understanding you will have of the world around you and the issues that matter to you most.

    However, if no one shares their story, their thoughts, their opinions or their ideas, you will have nothing to think of other than your preconceived notions. Without additional information to change the way you think about things, you will be stuck in whatever mindset you already have.

    By sharing, we enable each other to help make the world a better place, that’s why sharing is so important.

    Special thanks to +Yonatan Zunger for providing the inspiration for this post. Had he not shared this earlier post (below), I would have been without the perspective I have today.

  • How often do you zone out?

    No, I’m not talking about catching up on Facebook. I’m not talking about looking through your Twitter feed nor am I talking about surfing the Internet when you should be working.

    When is the last time that you actually and completely zoned out?

    For me, zoning out is like meditating, but without all of the “meditation.”

    Every once in a while I like to turn off my distractions, put my hands and eyes to rest and just think.

    In our jobs, we are surrounded by nothing but distractions and more things to do. However, at the end of the day, I think many of us ask ourselves “what have we actually accomplished?” This busy work and abundance of “productivity” keeps us from doing what our brains were designed to do: think and reason.

    Typical white collar workplaces have workers facing multiple computer screens with their backs to the rest of the world. They are vulnerable to everyone walking by and seeing what they are doing, but most importantly, they are engrossed in being so “productive” that they neglect the opportunity to improve whatever it is that they do or sell.

    If you work for yourself or have a job that involves lots of critical thinking, zoning out can still be an important tool for you to ensure that what you’re doing is the best use of your time. Is there a better way of doing something or a more effective process? If you focus on being productive and getting everything done, you will neglect the opportunity to zone out and focus with what’s on your mind.

    We all carry a lot of mental baggage. We think about our families, our friendships, our finances and everything in between. If we keep those things in the back of our minds, unprocessed, they seem to build up, creating pressure. This pressure, is most visible in the form of stress. I think that if we all take the time to zone out and process these thoughts, we will all be able to release of the pressure and relieve some of the stress.

    When I zone out, I give myself an opportunity to evaluate what I am doing, why I am doing it and how I could do it better. Zoning out gives me the opportunity to tune everyone else out and explore my thoughts and emotions–things that we are told to keep at the wayside when we cross the threshold into the office.

    Perhaps it’s Mittyesque, but zoning out gives me the chance to carry out my inner dialog, to figure out how I can do things better and more purposefully and to give myself peace.

  • What 2013 Taught Me About Social Media

    This was a big year.

    In just 12 months I moved, appeared on the Suggested Users List, started a new job, stopped using Google+ for a while, uninstalled Foursquare, got engaged, decided to move to Dallas, deleted my Facebook account, became a +Google Glass Explorer.

    Tomorrow I will pack up all of my belongings in a truck and leave Tennessee (my home for the last 12 years) and head to Dallas, Texas. I’ve only been there twice. Each time I met with some great people that were introduced to me through Google+, +Scot Duke, +Joe Saad, +Katherine Fell and +Mark Neace.

    It’s true that without social media, I wouldn’t have made those connections and wouldn’t have had a small network of people already in Dallas. However, no matter how many people follow me, or how good I think I am, social media won’t magically get me my dream job or solve all of my problems.

    People talk. A lot. But, as we know, actions speak louder than words. This year I learned that just because I thought I was good at what I wanted to do, didn’t mean I would instantly become what I thought I was capable of.

    This year taught me the difference between ambition and talent.

    So many people that I am connected with advertise themselves as social media experts, marketing mavens or content creation gurus. But if they’re so good at doing those things, why do they spend so much time advertising themselves instead of getting things done? Are they all trying to be discovered? Are they trying to get “picked up?”

    I’m guilty as charged. I’ve done the same thing. From creating +McDermott Media and thinking I could instantly become a 6-figure a year consultant, to teaching people how to use Google+ at speaking engagements and guest lecture opportunities. I’ve always shared my knowledge and told people this is what you need to do.

    The truth? I’ve never working for a marketing firm. I’ve never been in advertising. I’ve never been paid to administrate the social media accounts of a company. It’s just something I’m really passionate about. Sadly, that passion alone won’t get me a job. In order to become successful at something, you need to establish yourself as the expert, but to become the expert you need to show your portfolio.

    So where do you get the portfolio? Sure, I could show you the websites I’ve created, the projects I’ve embarked upon or the cool people I’ve worked with, but what is that worth to a company that deals in widgets and business services?

    In order to get noticed for doing what you’re passionate about, you need to do something worth sharing: for +Cliff Roth, it’s his speed paintings; for +Daria Musk, it’s her music; for +matthew rappaport, it was first +Hangout Conversations and now +The Huffington Post! +Carter Gibson? +The LittleBigFund. +Rodney Pike has his incredible image manipulation and +Paul Roustan is always pushing the envelope with his live body painting broadcasts. +Evo Terra taught us that beer and sausage could sustain a man for a month. +Sarah Hill showed us that the power of hangouts can reach beyond the newsroom and into a business that helps people.

    Sure, the things that these people did might not capture the attention of the world, but they captured the attention of enough people. What made these individuals stand out was their persistence. They each picked the thing that they wanted to be good at and they excelled.

    I didn’t do that.

    Nope. Maybe I have project-oriented ADD, or am interested in too many things. In either case, my failure to master any single thing has left me the jack of many trades, but the master of none. In a world of billions of people, most businesses don’t have interest in people that are good at several things, but those who aregreat at a few things.

    Social media this year has taught me that in order for me to be successful in pursuing my passion, I will need to be dedicated to one thing. In order to achieve mastery, I must practice that thing day in and day out. I must part with my distractions and focus on what I really want to do.

    The Suggested Users List isn’t a magic wand.

    Many of you that have followed me for a long time may remember that I was very pessimistic towards the Suggested Users List. In fact, two years ago, I called Google out saying that +Vic Gundotra and his crew didn’t get social and were bastardizing their platform by glorifying people that never utilized the network; giving them millions of followers only to watch them waste away the opportunity to engage with the masses.

    Of course, many of those speculations were met with anger and disgrace. How dare I, a simpleton, slap the hand of Google when they were giving us so much greatness absolutely free? Who was I to question the ways that they did things?

    Regardless of the attitudes I was faced with, I noticed one thing evolve from sharing my thoughts: deep and meaningful conversations. I learned that in order to engage (or enrage) a group of people, I needed to share my feelings. I needed to go out on a ledge and voice my opinions.

    It turns out that the conversations resulting from sharing my thoughts were worth a hundred times more than the time I took in sharing my ideas. By taking the risk to challenge the status quo and the way things were being done, I was rewarded with new ideas, new perspectives and the encouragement to do better, try harder and find better ways to use the tools available to me.

    Now that I have found myself a member of the Suggested Users List for a few months, I can tell you a few things about having an incredibly large (but non-organic) following.

    – The quality of engagement reflects the quality of what you post.
    – People that used to engage often, will engage less.
    – You find yourself filtering and censoring yourself much more.
    – You spend more time managing your own comment threads than engaging with others’ posts.
    – You can’t answer or reply to every comment.
    – Things get lost in your inbox. You won’t be able to help it.
    – People will give up on you when you fail to respond.
    – There is not enough time to do everything you want.

    At first, I wasn’t recognizing or realizing these things, but they developed over time and eventually snow balled. I realized that some of the things I accused other SUL members of before were inevitable and not a flaw of character or a change of heart.

    There was a post I read the other day that +Eli Fennell shared entitled Social Media Popularity is Ephemeral (http://goo.gl/nIjtcA). The post talks about “the dangers of succumbing to the illusion of social media popularity.” That’s exactly what it is, an illusion. Getting hundreds of thousands of people circling you doesn’t mean anything but an opportunity. If you think you’re famous because a half a million people were told by a computer algorithm to follow you, you’re wrong.

    This year taught me that the only thing that really matters is what we make with what we have. If we have the opportunity to share our thoughts and think they might enrich other people, we should share our thoughts. If we know we have a gift to share with the world, we should share it. But, if it’s not worth sharing, maybe we should just keep it to ourselves or a smaller group, lest we burden the eyes and ears of those so willing to listen. If we abuse the power of having a large audience, we might quickly alienate them and lose our opportunity.

    So what is my purpose here?

    I watched a movie over the weekend that didn’t score the greatest of reviews, but left me with a desire in my heart to do something great. It was based on a short story by James Thurber (http://goo.gl/9T0VVI) which appeared in +The New Yorker. The character played by +Sean Penn  reminded me greatly of +Trey Ratcliff. The main character, Walter Mitty (played by Ben Stiller) reminded me of myself, my “day dreams” and my ambition. The moral of the story, though is that you have to set aside your fears and your hesitations and just get out there and do what inspires you.

    We’re in an age where one of our greatest values is living in the moment. We understand that we need to plan to be successful, but that we also need to seek the human experience. Not all of us will scale Mt. Everest, trek through the rain forest or visit Bangkok, but we all have the opportunity to shed our worries, our hesitations and our fears and do things that we will remember for the rest of our lives.

    I’ve learned a lot over the last year, but sometimes it takes a lot of things happening in a short period of time to realize how important every moment of your life is. And that brings me back to my purpose here: sharing those moments and those realizations. The one thing that I think I’m good at is sharing stories and I hope that some of the stories I share will empower you to create your own experiences and share your stories with others.

    What I’ve learned about social media in 2013 is that the best story to share is your own.

  • Don't Worry, Google+ Isn't Dead

    Last night I was a bit puzzled when I came upon a breakdown of the interaction on my posts from 2013. The results weren’t in any way scientific and could possibly carry a certain margin of error (see the big gaping hole in my follower count?). Nonetheless, the folks at +CircleCount were kind enough to put together an immensely powerful tool that is second to none.

    After reviewing my statistics, I started to review the statistics of others and realized that my numbers were down considerably compared to theirs. One of my favorite examples, +Paul Snedden, carried way more +1’s, comments and re-shares than I did (based on the number of followers). Paul’s raw engagement was only half of mine, but his follower count is less than 10% of mine. How could this be?

    After being puzzled, I posted a thread on Google+ asking users if they were becoming bored of the network, or had noticed any recent in falloff in engagement. Plenty of people came armed with answers, suspicions and their two cents. There were some great analyses presented along with some profound comments (the post is embedded below).


    The bottom line though is that there are plenty of people listening. In fact, there is so much more content being created that people have more to chose from. When the network looked like it was ebbing, it was actually flowing.

    It turns out that Google+ is just following the footsteps of other social networks before it. The original “in crowd” gets grounded, sets up shop, brings the masses and then slowing recede away. In fact, I’m guilty of doing the same thing. I took a near 6-month hiatus earlier this year, only to come back more excited than I ever have been before.

    Regardless of whether or not Google+ is or will continue to be successful, I want to make sure that I have a platform to catalog my ideas, my thoughts and my puzzles for you to put together. Posting them “in the stream” only creates the opportunity for them to get washed away and forgotten. Putting them on my blog where I can easily reference and organize them gives me hope that you will be able to come back, return and maybe even subscribe to these periodic rants.

    Next year the game is going to change, though. I’m going to focus on sharing what’s important to me and how I think it can help you. One of those things, is usually Google’s free tools and services to make my life easier. It sounds hokey, and no I don’t get paid by Google to tell you any of this, but I have really found over the last year that by really adopting Google’s ecosystem and using the latest tools available (like my Android phone and Google Glass) I’m finding that everything is effortless, giving me more time to focus on the things that matter, like this blog.

  • What did you learn from 2013?

    We’re all full of great ideas. Sadly, we will fail to write most of them down. The majority of those that we will do end up trying will probably fail, and the ones that were successful? Well, we’ll never know why they worked, but we can always go back and find out why failures failed.

    The end of any calendar year is the best opportunity to collect your notes, get yourself organized and size up your last twelve months. Did you accomplish your goals? Did you make progress on your multi-year goals? Do you feel that your time was well spent? What do you regret? What do you wish you had done?

    For both your business and personal lives, this time of the year is the perfect opportunity to take stock of what you did, what you did well, and what you wish you did better.

    What did you learn from 2013?

  • I'm betting 2014 will be the year of long-form content.

    Social media changed everything.

    For a long time now, we have been conversing in short sentences. Curbing so many of our communications to under 140 characters, that some bloggers have taken to curbing their content as well, trying to hold onto whatever sliver of the American’s attention span that is left.

    Do we all have ADD? Are we all incapable of reading a few paragraphs and getting through the entirety of one’s thoughts before forming our own opinions? Have we been reduced to exchanging memes and animated GIFs as each one of us tries to get wittier than the other?

    At some point or another, it all needs to stop. We need to get back to what writers do best: sharing stories.

    No, I’m not talking about the Cliff’s notes or the 15 second video. I’m talking about the 1,000 word essay, the 45-minute documentary, the high resolution portfolio that took months to perfect. I think it’s time for us to step away from the “quick and easy” and focus on investing some time an quality in the content we share.

    The reason that so many of us create content isn’t because it feeds our family or keeps a roof over our head. The reason most of us create content to share freely is because we enjoy doing it. So what’s better than being the best at what you enjoy doing?

    I think we are heading into a time where people focus less on the “idea of the moment” and start to hone in on the “concept that lasts.” Sure, we’ll still exchange puns and funny images that mock our popular culture, but those that are interested in creating things will focus less on the quick and easy, not so much on instant gratification but more on creating ideas and artwork worth spreading.

    As everyone becomes an expert in “social media” the value of being a social media expert in cheapened. We have all figured out how to communicate with each other online. Some of us perhaps better than others, but we’ve all learned that creating an account, building a presence and carrying on a conversation isn’t all that hard. What’s really hard is creating a conversation that lasts.

    I may be stepping out on a limb, but I really feel that this next year will be the year of carefully-curated, meticulously thought-of and passionately perceived long-form Internet content.