Chris Brogan is a blogger, speaker, consultant, bestselling author and President and CEO of Human Business Works. Chris was one of the very first people I ever “met” on Twitter and I’ve been reading his blog www.chrisbrogan.com ever since.

Below is an interview with Chris about his upcoming book, examples of brands on Google+, Black Friday marketing in 2011, content curation tools, and more.

1. Congratulations on your upcoming book “Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything.” The book description says “This is a business book, not a technology book.” Can you share more about how this book can help businesspeople?

[CB] Business people tend to get a bit twitchy when a new technology comes along. But what I’m saying with this book is that this is a book about how to use the telephone to sell, or how to use business cards as part of your selling, or what to talk about at the cocktail party to sell. The tech of it all isn’t the worry. The problem is, for some unknown reason, humans get really weird when they start trying to use social media to sell. They forget the niceties and the human nature sometimes.

2. Google+ Pages have been around for a few weeks now. What are some examples of companies and organizations making good use of them?

[CB] I love what Samsung USA is doing (and no, not because you work there). I love what Dell has done. I think that Pepsi is already getting great engagement on their site. For a small business, check out Allure Home Improvements. I think people can really learn from places like these. Oh, and Kodak! Great work, Jennifer Cisney and team.

3. Social media is becoming an important part of how brands do marketing. What did you think of Black Friday efforts this year? You know who I saw doing something interesting for Black Friday?

[CB] Cali Lewis. Not a company, a person. Someone who works for a brand of her own, but who used Amazon associate links to point people towards products she endorsed, with a cut for herself. Did I see any brands doing something amazing with Black Friday? Well, at the risk of really seeming like I’m sucking up (I’m willing to risk this), I *did* like that Samsung had a nice summary on the Google+ page. Beyond that? Not as much on Twitter as I’d had expected, and I’m no longer qualified to talk about Facebook. I don’t go there anymore.

4. What are your thoughts on content curation and services like Pinterest, Curated.by and Storify?

[CB] I think that content curation is *finally* getting its due. Steve Rosenbaum wrote a grossly overlooked book, CURATION NATION, that deserves more eyeballs and thought. The specific tools will come and go, but people are finally understanding that curation is just as important as creation.

5. You’ve been blogging for over a decade and you’ve been using WordPress for many years. Do you think WordPress is at risk with the increased usage of Tumblr, Google+ and social media overall?

[CB] I rarely worry much about the tools. I think that there’s a huge group of people using Tumblr for curation and sometimes throwaway products. I think that people looking to use serious tools for serious business will stick with WordPress, but when I say that, don’t presume that I’m being elitist. I’m saying that one set of tools, WordPress, delivers a lot more business value. I’m saying that Tumblr is easy and makes it very easy to share and create. Both are quite wonderful and useful. That’s how I would divide them.

6. What advice would you give to bloggers who aspire to be book authors?

[CB] Blogging and books are two different disciplines, but I will say that if you blog daily and if you can write thoughts up such that they have a beginning, middle, and an end, you’ve got some potential. If you REALLY want to know what bloggers have to focus on, it’s building platform. Book deals go to people with lots of followers and readers, not the people with the best ideas. Sorry to pop your bubble, aspiring authors, but Trust Agents isn’t a great book. I just have a huge platform. Yep, there it is.

The A Case for Social Depth

+Dan Reimold has 44 followers at the time that I write this. He wrote an “article” called “Google+: Social Media Upstart ‘Worse Than a Ghost Town.”

Dan‘s article basically says “Google+ is not good because no one follows me.”

Now, Dan has some “evidence” for this. Of course he does.

Except his evidence consists of Rainbow Rowell’s article on Omaha.com. +Rainbow Rowell has 33 followers on G+ and she has posted a handful of times. Rainbow’s opinionated column basically comes down to this: “My Google+ home page is worse than a ghost town. It doesn’t even feel haunted. Meanwhile, down the road,in a much less desirable neighborhood, Facebook is teeming with life.” So apparently Google+ is dead because Facebook, which is over half a decade older has more users poking each other (I’m not disagreeing necessarily, just paraphrasing).

And her “sequel” is well… “The fact that I think Google+ is useless might be one of the best possible indicators that it’s going to succeed. Get yourself a Google+ account. This thing’s going to be huge.”I’m not sure what it is. Insurance? Change of heart? Sarcasm? Live journal emotional flashback?

But that’s not all. The “best” evidence comes from the one and only Forbes: +Paul Tassi, the person who called the “eulogy” for Google+ and celebrated when others talked about it on G+.

Apparently Google+ has become appealing to Mr. Tassi, who ironically also wrote a follow-up article only hours after the first one. No one remembers that one. Now, when I first saw Tassi’s profile on Aug 15th, he had few followers and aprox 5 public posts. Today he’s a happy Google Pluser with 1200+ followers. He almost raves about it without having to rave about it. Paul has converted and has amassed a following.

But wasn’t G+ dead? Hmmm… I’m confused now. I thought the word “EULOGY” was a strong one but apparently I’ve been reading the wrong dictionary.

Now, I would’ve rather Dan linking to this TechCrunch article. Despite their opinionated (and allegedly unbiased) point of view and their recent TMZification, TC writers actually know what they’re talking about. +Robin Wauters actually posted some numbers: A 41% decrease in public posts month-to-month. He might be right (someone please do call +Robert Scoble lol), but I will soon tell you why less posts doesn’t show the whole story. It’s not a good sign, but it doesn’t say anything about the quality of posts and the engagement within them (take a look at the average Fb post), or the quality of users (take a look at your DMs and you’ll see what I mean).

My thoughts are that if something is dead or a “ghost town”, then no one will care enough to write about it more than once. Google Buzz died once and it was a quick death. Google+ is dying on a daily basis but I don’t think +Larry Page is worried about what to post next before someone else tweets about his absence.

Traffic matters and all these deaths of Google+ create traffic. Even if the only people who care about it are those geeking out here and the media which absolutely loves to cover social media at its shallowest.

25 million or not, the Google+ community is unique and it has something worth coming back here for: DEPTH.

We’ll see what happens but I can assure you that there is no dead player in the Social War(s). Social depth is what I see as the next big thing in social. And I don’t mean this based on evidence but only as my personal hope (I’ve learned from the pros above that writing is apparently all about my own experience). In all seriousness, this is why I think Google+ matters to me: SOCIAL DEPTH.

Google+ doesn’t create it, but it enables it in a way that my blog doesn’t, location-based apps don’t, Twitter barely does, FriendFeed almost did, Tumblr almost does, and MySpace never will.

I’m a big fan of all Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Google+ is new so I may be blinded by that. Or maybe I’m excited to see 3 big competitors instead of two or maybe I’m more of an “interest graph” kind of guy. I’m in a position where I can, and must, get to know them all quite well. But bottom line, I’d interested in more meaning and substance while I’m spending time on these networks. And the same goes for articles with clever traffic-driving titles.

Hugh Macleod, the cartoonist who blogs at gapingvoid.com, recently announced that he was “giving up” Twitter and Facebook to “reclaim” blogging.

His reasoning seems to be partly philosophical (content ownership) and partly strategic (less tweeting about meals means more time to blog about, well, the important stuff).

Philosophically, Hugh says he doesn’t appreciate the fact that social media sites own what is supposed to be his content. There’s no WordPress-like utopian open source self-hosted social network (and I haven’t heard about Diaspora since Mark Zuckerberg sent his $10 donation).

The cause may be a noble one, but I’m skeptical of this alleged ownership argument though. Hugh and others who have shunned Twitter before him (ie. Seth Godin) don’t seem to be opposed to others sharing their content on Facebook and Twitter. The “Tweet” and “Like” buttons that appear at the bottom of each of their blog posts are evidence that they approve of content sharing and traffic building. It’s ironic that the “Decide” call to action on Hugh’s blog post is only a few pixels above the word “Tweet.”

Strategically… Hugh has a point. Focusing on one thing, instead of aimlessly trying to be active all over the web, makes a lot of sense. However, Hugh is in a unique position. He’s a published author and you could say he’s a bit of a quotable celebrity in the tech startup scene. Whether Hugh will be able to maintain the interest that his recent blog post generated (111 comments and counting) is yet to be seen, but there’s a chance he’ll be ok even if he never tweets ever again.

So, should you give up Twitter and Facebook to reclaim blogging?

Probably not, but ask yourself the following questions before making a decision:

1. Do I have a “reclaimable” blog?

Most likely, you do not. A “reclaimable” blog would be one that used to get a lot of traffic and comments, but at some point it failed to keep up. According to Compete, gapingvoid.com was getting 65k unique visitors in July of 2010. A year later, that was only 12.7K. The drop is a great one, but 12.7K unique visitors is still a lot.

2. What am I trying to achieve?

Is your goal to have a creative outlet where you share thoughts and ideas? Or are you trying to become a top blogger and quit your day job?

3. What do I really enjoy doing?

This is very important. I personally enjoy blogging and podcasting but it’s getting harder to do this. Being on Google+, Twitter and Facebook allows me to have rewarding conversations and discussions with friends and strangers, at any time and from anywhere.

4. What am I good at?

Everyone is different and you need to be objective about what you’re good at. People that are comfortable in front or behind a camera should be on YouTube, Flickr or Instagram. People with a radio voice should probably check out BlogTalkRadio and Cinch.

5. Where does my audience want me?

Hugh’s audience might be more than happy to visit his blog. For you, it might be a different story. Maybe your Twitter friends like to communicate with you in 140 characters, but they might not really be interested in reading your essays. It’s important to consider your audience, even if it’s a small one.

I asked myself the 5 questions above and I quickly determined that it would not be possible for me to give up Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to focus on blogging. In the same way, I wouldn’t give up blogging to focus on social networks.

In conclusion, I don’t think you should follow in Hugh’s footsteps. As Hugh mentioned in his post, blogging has gone from magical to diluted in one decade. Unfortunately for bloggers, I’m not sure that magic will ever be recovered.

Whether we can call it magical or not, great content has the opportunity to create valuable and powerful experiences in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Where and how you do this is completely up to you.

It’s funny to see some of the same people who have praised Web 2.0 and social media for years and highly depend on social media themselves, pointing the finger at “social media experts.” These myopic blog posts get views and buzz, but they are so generic that it shows that they don’t really see the entire picture or are simply seeking attention by trying to stand out amidst a sea of social media related content and opinions.

Are these kinds of articles/posts new? Nope. Criticism of “gurus,” “ninjas,” “experts,” “snake oil salesmen,” etc. abound online. Everyone and their cousin has written about it (I’m sure I’ve done it myself and I apologize on behalf of my younger, ignorant self).

Ironically, many of the people  making these claims are the same ones that speak at conferences, write books, and appear on TV and magazine articles to talk about how much they know about social media. They speak as experts and then talk about a generic group of renegade “social media experts.”

Based on my experience, I know how some small business owners see social media and how very large corporations see social media. I also have interacted with PR/marketing/advertising agencies, technology vendors, and startups/developers to have enough of an idea of how they see it.

And from what I’ve experienced, regardless of what you read in blog post x, most large companies need people who specialize in social media in various areas of the organization. In the same way, most small businesses need help with getting started in social media.

Sure, it would be fantastic if everyone from the CEO to customer service reps, marketing departments, and the agencies helping them were not only aware of how the space is evolving on a monthly basis, but also had experience and deep knowledge about what works, what doesn’t, and what it all means for the organization.

In an ideal world, everyone would have experience and knowledge around social strategy, integration, execution, management, testing, and measurement, and everyone would know how to spend dollars correctly to make things happen efficiently, creatively and with relevance, but that is not the case. The fact is that most large companies are still learning and some are still skeptic, despite the strong data suggesting that people are spending a lot of their time and attention on social sites. It takes resources and money to provide great customer service and create great marketing. In the same way, most small businesses probably don’t even have the time to do much more beyond creating a Facebook page and putting a Facebook icon on a billboard.

Pointing a finger at “social media experts” is like pointing a finger at “media planning experts.” It’s terribly vague.

Another case against the “social media experts” is the large amount of scammers and spammers out there. True, there are a lot of people trying to sell you everything from “ROI” to revolutionary sentiment analysis to $99 Facebook pages and Twitter followers by the gazillions.

Every single day of the year I get either a call, a LinkedIn message or an email from someone trying to reach the social media strategist/manager/expert/owner/director/leader at the company I work for. Every single day.

Are we in a bubble? Nevermind, wrong topic.

So every single day I get these kinds of messages and I try to take some of them because there are some pretty interesting and valuable tools, vendors, agencies and startups out there. The interesting thing is that all of these salespeople want to talk to some kind of social media specialist. Regardless of how good these vendors are, they are all looking for who? Social media experts.

And you know what? The good companies will try to talk to a social media specialist. The bad ones will probably try to reach anyone in marketing communications, corporate communications, media planning, research, or who knows, maybe even HR, legal, and accounting to try to sell what the anti-expert experts call “snake oil.” It might be easier to sell “snake oil” (either through a phone call or a blog post) to someone who doesn’t really understand what works in social media.

Without experts/specialists, it’s easy for companies to fall for fluffy, borderline useless, and/or expensive services and products.

And without people who know how to get things done in social media, it is easy to miss on great opportunities and completely dismiss great threats.

I wish we could, but we can’t just become all-knowing over night.

Someone can’t just wake up one day and do marketing and customer service in social media simply by “knowing the consumer” and saying “transparency,” “brevity” and “relevance” out loud to magically “generate revenue.” Sorry but ummm no. You don’t magically wake up one day just knowing everything there is to know about any topic or profession. And you don’t magically learn about new technologies and opportunities simply by knowing the basics of business. And on a sidenote, marketing is not just about revenue. Social media is most definitely not just about revenue.

Another issue I have with the anti-expert statement is the despise for younger professionals. It’s easy to poke fun at interns but sometimes they might have more passion, interest and skill in social media than people that have been in marketing for a long time.

Everyone learns at some point and that’s why companies need to seek people who are most knowledgeable and experienced (not just most popular or “influential”).

In a way, many of us who work within social media have been snake oil consumers, and even “salespeople” if you want to think about it that way. A lot of the “influencers” in social media were once ignorant Kool-aid drinkers too. At some point Gary Vee was just a guy trying to upload a video online. At some point Robert Scoble got excited over a web log. At some point Frank Eliason was just someone in a customer service department who liked a site called Twitter. At some point everyone was on Google Buzz. At some point Empire Avenue was going to take over the world.

I’m not really sure if this is making sense as I’m just typing thoughts at this point but I must say I simply find it very dishonest and self-righteous to one day brag about the powers of something, and the next day shun others doing it or specializing in it. It is one thing to say to a colleague “watch out for x, y and z because it is not true and a, b, and c will save you some trouble.” It’s a completely different matter to point a finger saying “social media experts are idiots and I’m not.”

I think it’s time to end the whole “snake oil salesmen” and “social media guru” finger-pointing conversation.

We get it anti-expert experts. You think you’re awesome and everyone else isn’t, and you want us to retweet it because you’re so influential and strategic and revenue-oriented.

At this point, blog posts about “snake oil salesmen” are becoming “snake oil” themselves.

Sarah Austin was one of the first live streaming, life-casters popularized on Justin.TV and she is the founder of Pop17, “a collaborative blogging platform and web show that covers and tracks emerging web trends and tells the stories behind what’s going in social media.”

Sarah and I have a SXSWi 2011 Panel Proposal with Brandon Prebynski, Joel Cheesman, Christopher Kahle and Ryan Paugh. We’d really appreciate your votes and comments at http://bit.ly/howtogetajob by August 27th, 2010.

Listen to this entire 38th episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Sarah Austin on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio. Some show highlights and quotes are below. Enjoy!

Brands on Social Media

 ”When brands become a part of the community, it really feels like the brand is like your friend. You really love them, like you would a real person. In social media, they take on attributes of people because there are personalitieis behind the brand making tweets, answering questions, customer service, and establishing relationships with people, connecting with people on their interests, and offering something back to the community.”

“Ford’s really great. I had such a time doing the Ford Fiesta Movement. I got to drive a car around and go on all these adventures. It was also a competition. I got to do interviews with Ford designers. It’s interesting to see them being really progressive. Ford used to not appeal to the Millenial demographic. Ford’s really changed and become hip.”

“Companies like Virgin America are doing a really good job. They appeal to a tech demographic and people in social media really like flying on Virgin America. I was able to meet with them and interview Richard Branson. They are really involved in social media and they value people in tech. They syndicate shows like “Wine Library TV” by Gary Vaynerchuck.”

Facebook and “The Social Network” Movie

“Facebook has taken over the world. They own everything but China and they have all the conversations and connections all over the world.”

“To some people, things aren’t official until it’s on Facebook.”

 ”Movies are starting to document a real movement, a social media revolution, and it’s really hitting the mainstream.”

Foursquare

 ”I use Foursquare and have been using it for a while. I have a lot of friends there. If I want to know where my friends are right now, I’ll get on Foursquare. Facebook Places hasn’t quite reached that with me yet. I’m still on Foursquare and plug that in to Facebook.

” It will be interesting to see how developers use Facebook Places and do something cool with it. I don’t think this means Foursquare is over. I think they have to create more relationships with businesses, maybe small local business, so they can provide value on Facebook and stay on there.”

Live Streaming Platforms and Privacy

“Each of the platform has its advantages. There’s just a lot going on. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out when YouTube starts to get into the picture.”

“These sites are going in different directions so what will make them stand out for the long-run will be withstanding all the legal issues that they’ll have to go through, and making the sites safe and guarding by age, demographics, and region. The content and making these sites as secure as possible will be some of their most valuable developments.”

“I use Justin.TV  and I have a lot of information on there. I’ve had 10 million video views and 27,000 followers there. These are people that have a lot  access and have know me about 5 years. I dont really know the informationa bout the people watching me. Having more peripherals set up and have security on my broadcasts. Privacy is a big issue and whichever of these companies can tackle that will have a huge advantage over the competition.”

Word of Mouth

“Word of mouth is one of the most powerful communication tools because people believe that more than anything else. That is the most convincing element.”

Sarah the Geek

“I’m a geeky filmmaker. That’s what I’ve been doing for 13 years. Anything about film making I love to geek out on.”

Interviewing Others

“I think the secret to a good interview depends on whether you’re trying to get a person’s story or trying to get a story out of them. There’s a web of six degrees of separation… everyone is very accessible and the more people that become accessible it opens a lot of doors. What I really wanted to do is capture a positive angle of growth and success, not only contributing to one personal success but also to what they are doing for their communities.”

“I feel like everybody in social media has something to give back to the community and my way of giving back is providing media, documenting and doing interviews.”

Acting

“I took a theater class once. I did act in an indie film that was about a video blogger, it was a horror film. I dabbled in it a little bit, but nothing serious.”

Alternative Careers

“If I had to do something else, it would be something sporty. I’d like to do something where I’m physically active. This might sound silly, but the career before I was thinking about before before was being a park ranger. I hike a lot. It’s beautiful here.”

Our SXSW 2011 Panel Proposal

“We’ll provide a lot of information about how to get a job using social media and how to leverage social media for your career.” http://bit.ly/votesxsw2011

Web analytics are cool. If you agree with that statement, there’s a good change you’ve spent some time reading Occam’s Razor, the fascinating blog about web analytics by Avinash Kaushik (author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day).

If you don’t know who Avinash is then just Google “Web Analytics” and you’ll surely find out who he is. I’ve personally  learnt much from his thought-provoking and action-oriented writings, and I’m sure you will too. Below is an interview about some of the hot topics in web analytics today.

1. Tools like Woopra have introduced us to real-time analytics. Is real-time the future of analytics? Why are we not there yet?

There is more and more real-time data available. Google Analytics is updated, officially, every hour. Then there are cool tools like Chartbeat, etc. My personal perspective on real time analytics is…. if you can’t take real-time action then why do you want real time data?

In 99% of the cases real-time data is not actionable (it is not statistically significant and people jump the gun on the wrong signals), and companies (big or small) can’t actually take any action even if there is an actionable signal (change campaigns, landing pages, stop emails from going out or whatever). Then why do you want the data?

Real-time data becomes an excuse to stare at computer screens or do data puking. It keeps people from doing thoughtful analysis and looking at non-tactical things (and adding value to their employer).

If your organization meets these two rules: a) You have enough traffic / responses on your site to get statistically significant data AND b) You have a capacity to change things (take action), you should seek out real time data and you should make use of it. If you don’t meet the two rules take a long hard look at if you are engaging in any activity that is adding to your company’s bottom-line when you tap into real time data.

2. In 2007, you wrote a post  about “engagement” often being an “excuse,” not a metric. Now that we can measure things like comments, Facebook likes, ReTweets, check-ins, etc., what are your thoughts about the importance of measuring engagement?

My point of view on engagement is simple: What the heck does it actually mean? The answer is? Everything to everyone. Hence my minor displeasure at that metric. I believe in clarity of communication and a razor sharp focus on solving specific problems. Hence precise measurements, and naming metrics for clarity.

Engagement means nothing, hence does not drive action.

My recommendation was that if you are measuring time spent on the site as “engagement” then call it Time on Site. If you are measuring the number of visits by one person as “engagement” call it Visitor Loyalty. Then people know what you are measuring and what to do with the data.

With regards to your point about Twitter and Facebook…. it is very very cool that we can measure new things. The metrics I like (or have formulated) are….

# of Retweets per 1000 followers. I call it Message Amplification.
# of Replies sent & received per day. I call it Conversation Rate.

Both measure “engagement”, but they are called what they actually measure. That’s what I recommend. More here: Social Media Analytics: Twitter: Quantitative & Qualitative Metrics.

In each new medium (like social now) we’ll get even more opportunities to measure if we are doing this right. Unique metrics for unique “engagement” processes.

3. Today’s tools and vendors seem to still be fragmented so we find separate tools for web analytics, monitoring, and specific insights. Do you see the industry consolidating to provide clients with a super tool that does it all?

Yes, and no.

Yes in the sense that as things get settled you’ll see tools evolving to incorporate that reporting. AdWords reporting used to be all by itself (it was too young, too new and no one new where it was going). It is now standard reporting included in Google Analytics and Omniture and other tools.

In the last couple of years AdSense, TV, Email, Display are all incorporated into Google Analytics, as an example. Or sometimes different vendors merge things together, as it the case with the 4Q voice of customer survey which merges with Google Analytics.

So as digital strategies reach some level of maturity expect tools by Google and Yahoo! and WebTrends and more to incorporate them together.

No in the sense that we live in such an ever evolving space (I think of web analytics today as a toddler, a lot of growth/change is to come and we actually have no idea what it is going to become). So new things will keep coming and they’ll be outside and we’ll have to become comfortable with what I call Multiplicity, the idea that to do your job effectively on the web you’ll have to:

a) Use the right tool to answer the right question, and b) Be very comfortable with managing / learning / using multiple tools at one time

And I’ll tell that that to me that is just so exciting that the world changes and evolves and you can have so much fun. Every day!

4. Bloggers often pay attention to comments and Social Media sharing as a way to measure success. What should bloggers be paying more attention to?

This should not come as a surprise… I have a blog post on Blog Metrics! : ) Here it is: Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success.

It is important to focus on the impact of social media on your blogging success (retweets, likes, replies to you on twitter and facebook to posts about your blog etc etc). But blogging is about more than social media links / clicks. The essence of my blog post about is that you should measure holistic success of your blog. The metrics I recommend are:

1. Raw Author Contribution
2. Audience Growth
3. Conversation Rate
4. Citations / Ripple Index (social media falls here)
5. Cost
6. Benefit ($$)

Taking that view allows you to have a robust understanding of if you are adding value and if you should keep doing what you are doing (or change!). I encourage people to do that beyond simply checking retweets or likes.

5. Your 10/90 rule is great because it focuses on people, not tools or technologies. With that rule in mind, what advice would you give to young people getting started in marketing research and analytics?

Learn to try new things and play in the real world. There is no better medium in the world for you to try anything you want, all by yourself without the need to rely on your employer to empower you. Tools are free or cheap. Platforms are free or cheap. All you need is a pinch of effort and a dash of desire to learn in the real world. If you do that no one will refuse to hire you because you’ll actually know what the heck you are talking about. If you don’t do that… well…. life will be tougher.

Here is a blog post that outlines how to do that, at least for Web Analytics: Web Analytics Career Advice: Play In The Real World.

6. Your books “Web Analytics 2.0″ and “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” have not only helped many people, but also created excitement around web analytics. Did you ever think you would one day be the closest thing to an Analytics Rock Star?

There is no such thing as a Rock Star. From dust to dust. :)

But I did want to share that I feel incredibly blessed that blogging and engaging in social media allows me (and anyone else!) to simply do what I am passionate about (writing and analytics), and have something come of it. My blog is responsible for Wiley contacting me and requesting me to write a book and things kept evolving like that. All I did is focus on writing things people would find to be “incredible” and “of value” (my two mantras for blogging).

As you know, all my proceeds from both my books are donated to charity (Doctors Without Borders, The Smile Train and Ekal Vidyalaya), and in around two years that amount is over $100k. I am astounded at that outcome.  More than anything it shows how “powerful” each and every one of us can be when we leverage the beautiful internet and focus on adding value through our passion.

Viva la web!

I had the very cool opportunity to speak at this year’s SXSW Interactive as part of the Future15: Diversity series, which was organized by Glenda Bautista. The presentation, titled “The Online Latino: A New Digital Native,” was all about Latin Americans and the web.

While it is a myth that Latin Americans are not online, only 30% of them are. The presentation went into the challenges (poverty, inequality, censorship, and the social/economic/digital divide), as well as what is changing (tech hubs, encouraging governments, businesses rolling out infrastructure, and a rapidly growing online community).

If you’re interested in learning more about what is happening online and offline in Latin America, including Streisand effects, citizen journalism, social networking, innovative start-ups, and stories about the people that are converting ideas into movements, check out the slides and videos below. Feedback (through email or comments) is appreciated :)

Thanks to Diego Contreras (aka Diegoliath) for helping me with the design, Jon Gipson for recording the video, and Kara Andrade for writing the original proposal with me and helping out with ideas, insights, and stats.