Have you seen something like this floating through your social media data stream recently? “Who wants to sponsor me to go to Overrated Conference 2011?” “I need a sponsor for my blog. Anyone?” “Who wants to send me to ABC for the WXY meetup?” Just look around. They’re everywhere. Seems that everyone with any social media presence, no matter now small, has glommed onto the “Sponsor me!” bandwagon. Unfortunately, 99.9% of those requests won’t ever get looked at, let alone acted on. Why? It’s simple, really. You want to be sponsored? You better damn well be sponsorable. What does that mean? What do you mean “I’d better be sponsorable? That’s not even a real word, Peter!” It’s a real word, [...]

So it’s 2011. Welcome to the new year. I’m not going to bore you by telling you what BS resolutions you should try, since we both know none of us will keep them. I’ll simply tell you what I’d like to do. I’d like to make more money. I’d like to have several sources of revenue, all working for me 24/7, even when I’m not. I’d like to look good naked, when standing in front of a mirror, or in front of another person, or when I’m in a triathlon swimsuit before a big race. I’d like to become faster in my athletic pursuits. I’d like to make sure that I have time for myself, even if that means working, [...]

According to various media outlets, on Wednesday, November 24th, a bunch of misguided idiots are attempting to get people who, on average, fly twice a year, to participate in something called “National Opt-Out Day,” wherein they’d like all of these twice-a-year travelers to refuse the Backscatter technology TSA scanners at the airports, and instead, ask for pat-downs. The flawed logic of these massively misguided protest organizers is that if everyone does it, it’ll slow down security lines across the country, resulting in massive flight delays, and “will show the government that we object.” Holy crap on a stick, the end of days is coming – I’m actually leaning towards siding with the TSA on this one. Sort of. First off, [...]

Was speaking at a conference the other day, and was prepping some notes a few minutes prior to my speech, when someone came up to me and introduced themselves. “Hi, Peter, I’m so and so – I’ve wanted to meet you, I follow you on Twitter, Facebook, etc…” “Hi, so and so – Nice to meet you.” Ridiculously long awkward pause. And then she went and sat down, and I know she spent the entire speech thinking “I can’t believe I blew that.” What’s the first thing you say to someone when you’re introduced? How do you say hi and not bore them? How do you do it without becoming a douche? Without making it all about you you you? [...]

I spent a day last week speaking to a Fortune 100 company about the best ways to integrate social media into their marketing plans, and how best to use social media to help their marketing to continue to generate revenue. The majority of questions they asked me afterward fell into the following categories: 1) So how do we get more followers? 2) So how do we get more likes? 3) Should we hold a contest to get more followers/likes? 4) How do we get our followers/likes to spread the word about us? These are smart people. These people are the marketing force behind a company that interacts with millions of people through multiple brands every day. These people aren’t stupid [...]