• Measuring Success in Social Media

    I laugh when I see the term, “social media expert.“ Let’s be honest. It’s an emerging field and the only thing that makes someone an expert is that they have labeled themselves as such and they read Mashable and Seth Godin.

    With that in mind, I’ll just point out that for the last two years I’ve gotten paid to handle social media. I don’t know if that makes me an expert in the field, but it does mean that I’m employed in the field. (And I read Mashable and Seth Godin just for good measure.)

    So, how do I measure success?

    False positives

    • Size of following. Having 25,000 followers on Twitter or 10,000 fans of your Facebook page doesn’t mean jack.
    • Contest excitement. I love hosting contests as much as the next guy, but hosting a big contest doesn’t mean jack.
    • Being active. Utilizing the tools of social media is important, but just showing up doesn’t mean jack.
    • Atta boys. [Or atta girls] When you first get started everyone in your organization will be excited, but that doesn’t mean jack.
    • Sales or lead generation. This may make the boss happy, but in most cases it doesn’t mean jack.

    True positives

    • Engagement. Are your followers, fans, subscribers listening to the stuff you send out in a measurable way? Do they click on links you recommend? Do they comment on stuff you post? Do they open the emails you send? Having a large following is only as valuable as your ability to engage those people. Otherwise, your just another message they are ignoring. I’d rather have 100 engaged Twitter followers than 25,000 who ignore me. What to measure: comments, likes, open rates, click rates, number of clicks, mentions on fan/followers feeds.
    • Users who contribute. Is your effort a two-way conversation? Traditional marketing is about pushing a message. Social media is about pulling a response. It’s shocking to me how many organizations have large followings but only push. And they wonder why they think their social media efforts are a waste of money? They are! What to measure: Submissions, Facebook messages, Twitter direct messages, unsolicited or solicited ideas.
    • Repeaters. This post is the perfect example. When I press publish on this blog post, my own network will draw a couple hundred visitors. But this post will be read several thousand times in just 7 days. How did that happen? Repeaters. What to measure: Facebook shares, Twitter retweets, add-to-this analytics, trackbacks, blog posts about your content/product/service.

  • They Can’t All be Winners

    Photo by canonsnapper via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Golf has taught me a lot of life lessons.

    Probably most importantly is this one: Since you’ll never be perfect, success or failure is defined by how you respond in less-than-ideal circumstances.

    I’ve always been a recovery golfer. Even when I was playing my best golf– my playing partners always complimented me more on my ability to make a recovery shot than my ability to hit the ball a long way off the tee into the fairway or sink a 5 foot putt for par. As we drove home or hung out at the clubhouse it’s always the recovery shot stories that get told. “Adam hit his  tee shot into the next fairway, than pulled out an 8 iron and hit a sky ball over the tree line and into the middle of the green.”

    When I played on a golf league these stories annoyed me a little. I’d play 6-7 boring holes, playing from the middle of the fairway, hitting to the pin side of the green, and score a long series of pars. But these weren’t remarkable. I heard other golfers tell me I was a bad playing partner. “All he does is make pars.” What made the other men talk were my stories of recovery. Ending up behind a tree. Or missing the green badly with an approach shot. Scrambling for a decent score when most guys would go double bogey or worse is worth talking about. But being “good” isn’t.

    You should have seen when Adam hit it in the water on the par 5 and only made a bogey.

    He snaked his second shot from under some trees than over the pond and onto to the green.

    Never mind the fact that being in those positions qualified as horrible golf!

    I think this is why Christian make such horrible story tellers.

    We’re boring. While our struggle is the most interesting thing about us it is the thing we hide the most. We like to emphasize the boring parts of our story. Worse yet, we like to pretend like we don’t ever miss life’s green.

    We like to pretend like we magically stopped sinning when we became believers.

    Like it or not, Americans are intrigued by stories of imperfect winners.

    I guess that means that in order to be interesting we have to be more open about who we really are?

  • Picky, Picky

    Photo by tostadophoto.com via Flickr (creative commons)

    Apparently contentment is not a Christian virtue anymore.

    If you hang out with Christians for any length of time, you’d think pickiness is a requirement of the faith.

    • “I really wasn’t into the message on Sunday. I mean, 95% of it was cool… but he said something about fathers I didn’t agree with. So I tuned him out.”
    • “We haven’t found the right church, we’ve been looking around, and nothing quite fits us.”
    • “I’m definitely not called to singleness, but I just haven’t found the right guy.”
    • “I used to be into the NIV, but I had to switch because I just don’t like the gender exclusive language.”
    • “I would help with the kids ministry, but [sipping a latte from Starbucks] my Sunday mornings are just too busy already.”
    • “I could never go to a church if the staff is a bunch of white males.”
    • “My church serves little snacks-n-stuff after the service. Which is cool, but I can’t believe they serve cheap pastries and coffee that isn’t fair trade. I mean, that’s gross on a lot of levels.”

    Need I go on?

    We live in communities that are reached by fewer than 10% of the population and yet we worry about this crap? Seriously? It’s like your house being on fire and being more worried about saving your wedding photos than your children.

    Shame on us. Shame on us for caring more about the desires of the 10% who come than the 90% who don’t. Shame on us for being so bored that we care about the things that don’t matter instead of simply obeying what Scripture teaches. Shame on us for making grey areas, black and white areas. Shame on us for blaming our inability to fulfill the Great Commission on issues.

    “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” — Jesus

  • Our first earthquake

    We were just finishing up a glorious Easter supper when we all said, “Do you feel that?”

    I looked to my right to see the chandelier rocking back and forth. It was about that time when Kristen and I both realized we were having an earthquake.

    It wasn’t violent. Our house swayed back and forth. It literally felt like we were on a ship, rocking back and forth in the waves. And it lasted a while.

    This was our first real earthquake experience since living in San Diego. For our kids, it was the first one they felt.

    Paul– having finished supper and roaming the house in boredom, rode out the earthquake laying on our bed. He thought it was a blast. Megan, slightly more logical, grabbed her stuffed bunny and went outside. Paul giggled and Megan was freaked out.

    Twitter lit on fire. Within 2 minutes of the quake, 35,000 tweets were posted with people saying they had felt it. People up in the Los Angeles area, people in Palm Springs, people in rural California and Arizona, and people as far away as Phoenix felt it. (5 hour drive)

    Scientists later confirmed that the quake was centered south of Mexicali, about 100 miles from our house, and measured 7.2.

    No damage at our house. Within about 10 minutes we went back to Easter as usual.

    Aftershock city! Just like when you get off of a long boat ride, it felt like the earth kept moving. Some were real aftershocks and some were our imagination.

    Our friends south of the border faired much worse, I’m afraid. CNN is reporting that 2 people were killed and lots more were injured. Additionally, tons of homes were seriously damaged.

    It was an Easter to remember. And an Easter to be thankful for building codes.

  • Megan won the prize!



    Megan won the prize!, originally uploaded by mclanea.

    The first kid to get 10 eggs this morning won the $1 bonus. It was close, but Megan won. As you can see, she was surprised.

  • Dolly, Elvis, Johnny on Easter Morning

    Thank you Ms. Dolly.

    Mr. Presley, you may be the king of rock-n-roll, but you ain’t the King. Thanks for that.

    Thank you Mr. Cash. You really brought it home.

    HT to John for the Dolly Parton link.

  • Facebook connect

    You now have the ability to post your comment at adammclane.com onto your Facebook profile. It’s completely optional, and as you can see in the image above, if you do link your comments to your Facebook profile you’ll have the chance to control how you’d like that to look.

    Over the past year or so I’ve noticed that a big chunk of the discussion for each post has happened on Facebook. That’s fantastic, but makes it hard for me to keep track of. This is an attempt to try to bridge the blog and Facebook comments together so more people can join the conversation easier.

    Ready to give it a try?

    To test it out, simply leave a comment on this post. When you are done click on the Facebook Connect button.

    Setting up Facebook connect on adammclane.com

    Facebook will ask you to verify that you’d like to connect, agree to that and you’re done!

    From now on when you come to the blog, if you are logged into Facebook, you’ll see your Facebook badge in the upper right hand corner of my blog. When you see that, you’re already logged in and ready to leave a comment– and share the discussion with your friends!

    Easy, right? Thanks for giving it a try!

    adammclane.com on Facebook

  • Computers at Work

    This reminded me of the YS office lately.

    HT to xkcd

  • Success and the American Dream

    Is this what you're after? Something tells me its not as easy as just buying it and sailing away.

    Have you ever noticed that people who have reached the pinnacle, the elusive American Dream, are actually miserable?

    “That’s just a Hollywood cliche.” Really? Think about your own interaction with highly successful people… I don’t think it’s a cliche. There are just as many miserable successful people as there are unsuccessful people.

    Here are some elements of what we define as people who’ve achieved the American Dream:

    • Big lifestyle (cars, houses, travel, jewelry, boats, planes, and other stuff)
    • Big notoriety (everyone knows who they are in their circle of influence, people talk about who they hang with, people are jealous of stuff they do)
    • Big influence (the stuff that they do makes others think, act, or spend)
    • Big power (they get to tell a lot of people what to do, they call the shots, they are monarchy at their work)

    While on the surface all of those things sound great, I think there’s a real reason why they are miserable.

    They are big, powerful, and wealthy… but none of that has brought them the freedom that sent them looking for the American Dream in the first place. It’s all come with entrapments.

    • Big lifestyle comes with a high cost of ownership. Buying stuff is fun, paying for upkeep and maintenance results in a lot of very wealthy people being in a lot of debt. They simply have to keep working just to maintain all the crap they own. You’d think that these people could control their schedules? Nope, they have to work 14 hours per day so they can keep the illusion going.
    • Big notoriety comes with a high cost of inconvenience and friendship politics. Within the rich and powerful there is a complex game to be played. You can’t just be seen with “anyone,” you need to be seen with the right people. And if you get too much notoriety you can’t be seen anywhere because going places just becomes annoying. People just wanting 5 minutes so they can say they met you… that sounds like a life full of hollow relationships to me. True friendship has got to be hard to find. Accountability? Yeah, right.
    • Big influence is a double-edged sword. This may seem like a lot of fun on the surface, but it comes with a ton of pressure. When the words that you say, the stuff you use, and the thoughts you think effects so many people– that influence comes with unlimited scrutiny.
    • Big power also means big responsibility. (You’ve heard that a million times!) Sure, it’s fun to call the shots. Who doesn’t like feeling like the genie every once in a while? But big power comes with the big expectation that you’ll deliver every time. The world holds its breath for Steve Jobs to reveal his latest gadget… but all the pressure is on him to reveal something that doesn’t suck. If it sucks, it was his call and a lot of people lose their livelihood. That’s a pretty stressful place to be every day.

    Sometimes when I look at the lives “rich and successful” people lead, I am repulsed. Seems more like a nightmare than a dream. That isn’t success! It’s a life of working 24 hours per day and being stressed about every relationship and decision. Yuck.

    I say these things because I’m beginning to dream of a different American Dream.

    If I’m honest, my American Dream has freedom at its core. (not acquiring stuff) I don’t want my stuff to own me so I want to make life simpler, not more complex. Buying stuff I can afford with cash is simple. The more I do that the more I like it. Notoriety isn’t nearly as intriguing as having truly deep relationships with a handful of friends. It is nice to be recognized for the right reasons, I can’t lie about that. But big influence? I’m working hard to have influence over my own actions! I suppose if that trickles out beyond me to my neighbors and community… cool, but I don’t dream of me speaking and an army of people doing. (Or watching a reality show about me) Really, I dream of having influence with a small number of people who also have influence in my life. Power? Only if that power leads to doing good for other people and having fun along the way. With that said, the power worth pursuing is to have enough power to truly have freedom.

    The old-style American Dream just feels tired and complex. I watch TV shows about them and just feel sorry for their life. This new-style American Dream makes me smile. Simplicity leads to freedom.

    Help me work this out a bit. Where does this new American Dream fall flat?

  • You’re a single lady, buddy

    This is Paul’s favorite sing-along song, too. And I’ve completely been there… wanting to tell my son the truth that he is not, indeed, a single lady. (But if he likes it, he better put a ring on it.)

    And yes, boys and girls, that is Carlos Whittacker! And yes, this mean father [sarcasm] is speaking at National Youth Workers Convention this Fall.

    [shamelessplug]Registration opens May 5th[/shamelessplug]

    If he’d like to share the stage with Beyonce to make up for it, that’s totally fine with us. Her people just need to connect with Tic ASAP.