Seth Godin has the most remarkable way of making a critical point without being either pompous or pedantic, and I’ve become a huge fan of his blog.  It’s not merely his style that I find endearing, but he speaks to simple truths.  One, posted yesterday, summed up a critical point that has been a frequent subject of discussion, but never before said with such clarity.  Don’t be boring.

If the marketplace isn’t talking about you, there’s a reason.

If people aren’t discussing your products, your services, your cause, your movement or your career, there’s a reason.

The reason is that you’re boring. (I guess that’s what boring means, right?) And you’re probably boring on purpose. You have boring pricing because that’s safer. You have a boring location because to do otherwise would be nuts. You have boring products because that’s what the market wants. That boring staff? They’re perfectly well qualified…

You don’t get unboring for free. Remarkable costs time and money and effort, but most of all, remarkable costs a willingness to be wrong.

The bottom line is that many people blog and twit to no end.  Say something.  Marketers use the phrase “add value.”  Give the rest of us a reason to read what you write.  If you don’t, then there’s no reason for you to write at all. 

But as Seth notes, being unboring means doing something few are willing to do, take a chance.  You want to be right.  You want to be loved.  You want to be inoffensive.  Thats fine, but then you offer nothing. 

I would add one further note to Seth’s thoughts.  Be thoughtful.  Adding a curse, or some outrageous but ridiculously inane comment, may make you unboring, but will also make you the village idiot.  For those conspiracy theorists for whom every case reflects the death of civilization at the hands of Big Brother, give it a rest.  It takes effort to be thoughtful, and discretion to not post about something when you have no actual thoughts on the subject.

There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

        –Sir Joshua Reynolds

And finally, both the blawgosphere and the twittersphere have enough people trying to prove their mettle by being “news aggregators,” meaning beefing up their mojo through passing along the same information available to everyone else.  We don’t need more, and the days of getting 6 million followers by retweeting other people’s efforts are over.  If you want people to be interested in you, earn it.

Which brings us to a serious paradigm for “retweeting” by a post RT by Susan Cartier Leibel.  From David Armani at a blog called Logic + Emotion, a short, sweet set of rules to apply before one hopes to become a twittersphere hero by a heavy hand on the “retweet” button:

Kept it short
Short Tweets are more likely to get re-tweeted if people do not have to edit them. The shorter the better because multiple “RT’s” and names are added each time someone does it.

Keep it creative
Good writing is essential to getting re-tweets. Think you’ve mastered the art of 140 Characters or less?  Now you have to master the art of 70 Characters or less. Creative writing helps generate interest.

Keep it valuable
Provide value in the form of a good link, a good laugh, or a good thought. Inspirational tweets or flat out humorous ones spread like wildfire. And really solid links to valuable content do as well.

Like me, David appears to be unimpressed with the nouveau fame of retweeting fools, though he has a clearer appreciation of the viral benefits of collecting untold millions of followers.  On the other hand, I suspect he lacks my trepidation at having followers with names like “sexyhotpantsgirl” and “bangaloremassmarketer”.  No good can come from that as far as I’m concerned.

In an earlier post, I asserted that retweeting constituted an endorsement of the post being retweeted.  The twit at issue, @Rex7, responded on twitter that this assertion “was a joke,” but declined my invitation to discuss in the comments.  Some agreed with @Rex7, while other did not.    Those who took the position that a retweet is meaningless are fooling themselves, though my guess is that their views were based on a lack of understanding of what “endorsement” means, having been subjected to too many political advertisements lately. 

When you retweet, you are saying that I believe that the post I’m retweeting is worth your time.  You can retweet positively or negatively (as in, “read this idiotic/dangerous post”), but retweeting is an affirmative act that says you believe that those following you should read it.  If not, then you’re either a spammer (as David says), unbearably lazy or borderline psychotic.  As for those who retweet posts that praise them to spread their own greatness, you’re just a shameless slut.

Which brings me to the podcast, Lawyer2Lawyer, by Bob Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams.  Kevin O’Keefe was on to discuss the virtues of twitter, and I was asked as well after all the more suitable candidates respectfully decline.  Being less than a half hour, and Kevin having about a three hour spiel always at the ready, I was like a babe in the woods in comparison.  But one thing is clear.  With all the talk about twitter, including my own posts, it’s gotten some serious attention which means that it is definitely not boring.