A recent study shows that we trust our friends recommendations less and less lately:

In some cases, social networks themselves may be contributing to the decline in trust. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have allowed people to maintain larger circles of casual associates, which may be diluting the credibility of peer-to-peer networks. In short, the more acquaintances a person has, the harder it can be to trust him or her.

People in the comments are looking for the reason behind this, that the article doesn’t give.

Don’t worry, I’m here to help.

Remember, you heard it from the Owl first.

I’m a fan of criticizing our society and everything I think is wrong with it.

But I’m also a diehard realist, and always consider if what I’m suggesting is possible.

This either creates hope of change, or a harsh realization of inevitability.

That’s the crossroad I’m at regarding self-promotion.

I don’t like self-promotion. I can’t say I don’t do it at all, but I really despise everything about it. I trust traditional word of mouth, on two good friends sharing something great with each other in a regular conversation. I believe that providing and spreading value should be done by two different people. There’s no real difference between the noise of advertising and the noise of self-promotion, but somehow the latter has been increasingly accepted lately. The reason? It works.

Or so people say…

Self-Promotion Limits

Let’s assume it works for a second. Why does it work? My guess is because we have friendly relationships with a group of people that feels obligated to like us, to like what we do, to be our first audience and our first advertisers. Initial self-promotion will hide our content’s true value. It’s just friendly reciprocity. Our friends are equally bad indicators of success as they are at giving honest criticism.

The real reason “it works” is because it brings fast results, and that’s all we need in this fast paced and impatient world of ours. Self-promoters have followers that they wouldn’t have if they hadn’t self-promoted their work. That’s why I really can’t say anything to those that do it, because they DO have results to back up their decision to self-promote. But what kind of results?

It took Seth G. and Gary V. years to reach the point where they are at right now. Not only years of hard work translated into innovative ideas and business success, but also years of patience. Patience waiting to show up in the media and real life friendly chats. Maybe unconsciously, but they did it anyway. Let’s see which bloggers, PR people, social media advisors and other practitioners, reach that level of success 10 or 15 years from now. There’s a difference between 25,000 and 1,000,000 followers, and self-promotion can only take you so far.

The great ones talk. The average ones yell.

Self-promotion Placebo

The problem with self-promotion is perception.

We think that the more we self-promote, the better results we get. That if we haven’t gotten enough responses is because we haven’t promoted it enough. This may be true in the beginning of the journey (and even this is questionable), but once you reach average success, self-promotion is just noise (which your friends won’t call you on). Self-promotion ends up working as a gratification placebo. Since we don’t get the response we want from our community, we do it ourselves, therefore creating the false perception of good quality content.

Newsflash: it didn’t get promoted because it wasn’t good enough, or it was aimed at the wrong people.

The reason there’s usually only a handful of really successful promoted posts in each blog (if we define success by comments, retweets and such), is because it’s hard to create that kind of content consistently. It has nothing to do with promotion.

We are trying to make the boring sound new and interesting, and we are failing every time.

Average success through self-promotion only fuels our desire for more attention. And a high need for attention paired up with low quality of content will eventually hurt our reputation.

Self-promotion Decision

A smart guy on Twitter said to me once: “Stop having faith in humanity. It’s far easier to just not.” And maybe he’s right.

But if he is, I’d rather lose.

If self-promotion and an irresponsible generation of noise is what it takes to thrive, I’d rather remain hidden and true to my values. I may be looking for a noise-less utopia, but it is because I think noise is more harmful than what we give it credit for, and self-promotion is a big factor behind it.

Integrity is more important than marketing victories.

Note: I have talked before about the timeless power of marketing, and how the world is not the best version of itself and never will be as long as connections and people skills are the ones who decide who reaches the top, instead of capability, talent and dedication. You can read my post on the topic here.

I encourage you to read Colin’s full post, but for now I want to quote this paragraph:

I would hazard to say that the great dearth of capable people in positions of power is one of the most unnecessary and harmful realities of the modern world. A fortunate few are able to leverage their abilities into notoriety and really reach their full potential, but most will never be able to do so, instead scrounging for food to stay alive while working on a cure for cancer or writing the next great philosophical treatise.

So my challenge to you is simple: this year, do everything you can to help other people succeed. Push those you know with talent and provide what assistance you can. Continue to work on your own endeavors, of course, but really make an extra effort to give others a leg up as well.

What interests me about Colin’s proposition, is that this seems to be happening more and more lately. We are collaborating in a different way.

The Change

Until now, collaboration has been focused on transactions. A win-win situation. Both give to get something in return.

The problem with that mentality is that it’s limited. There’s so much I can give to many, and there’s so much many can give to me. So, when one of the two can’t win, collaboration doesn’t happen. We have been prioritizing the gain, instead of the bond.

This is finally changing.

The future of collaboration is ego-less. In a world where people are becoming more economic and conscious of their resources (time, energy, money), there’s so much we can ask of them, regardless of what we give in return. A fair trade is not necessarily a needed trade. The only real way to create meaningful bonds and projects is to do it without expecting anything in return.

The real test comes when you have the opportunity to help someone with the previous knowledge that that person won’t be able to reciprocate. Paradoxically, the only way to do this consistently is to forget about the economic way of thinking. If you only act evaluating the reward and resources spent, you won’t contribute to this change.

The Meaning

There are many signs of society’s desire to make a change of mindset. For example, the reason we call it networking now instead of “doing business” is because there’s something shady about doing business. With business comes money, interests, conflict. With networking, we are highlighting the people instead of their profit potential. When you do business, you focus on what you can gain. When you network, you focus on how you can help (there’s still a huge expectancy of reward, but thankfully I’m seeing more and more events where “having fun” and “making friends” are the main values, with “doing business” taking a second place).

The future of collaboration is not longer about equality of status, rather than equality of consideration. You help anyone just because you can, not because they are a big deal or because you want to be on their radar. It’s not longer a matter of team, it’s a matter of them.

Just to clarify, this isn’t charity either. Charity happens either because of compassion, guilt, or a belief in a bigger goal. The future of collaboration is not nearly as rational as charity. You don’t do “because.” You just do. The emotional reward (and pain) of charity is immense. The reward of collaboration 3.0 may come eventually, but you have no logical reason to expect it.

And let’s not forget about technology and globalization. Where will we stop once this mentality and attitude spreads, once people leave their win part of the equation behind, once the whole world wants AND is able to help others?

Forget about the win-win and profit seek in a globalized and technological world of collaboration 2.0.

Collaboration 3.0 is a give-win situation, a beautiful “step back.”

Social media is a prison.

It’s unnatural, we are not supposed to like everyone.

But we are trying.

The more you get involved in things like Twitter or Facebook, the more people you connect with, the more polite you have to be. Now, politeness is reaching a ridiculous level, where everything is awesome and everyone is cool.

You can’t tell someone you don’t like them or what they do.

One of the reasons for this, is the word “Friend.” Are we really buying that? Are we really considering everyone as a friend?

The problem with being “friends” with everyone you connect with, is that it makes you a prisoner. Everyone knows that “breaking up” with a real friend in real life, is not easy. Not impossible, but definitely not easy. Usually it happens over time.

But social media friends are not real friends. People shouldn’t feel obliged to keep that act going. People shouldn’t even give explanations. It shouldn’t be that hard.

I blame all those Personal Branding blogs.

Because of them, we are afraid.

Afraid of being honest and direct. Afraid of being human.

God forbid if we say or do something someone doesn’t like and then we are ridiculed by millions.

God forbid if we actually embrace conflict, one of the most natural aspects of man.

God forbid if we actually show ourselves how we really are.

We are lying to ourselves.

We are pretending to care more about the social part than the business/networking part.

Losing readership, customers, followers is not a social fear. It’s a fear of interests, of politics.

True relationships are not about politics.

Social media is all about politics.

But there should be.

The way to eliminate part of the echo (and its negative consequences) of individual bloggers trying to improve their “personal brand” and to show their “ideas”, is having a healthy, positive and HONEST content philosophy.

Some already share this philosophy (very few though). Those who don’t think this way, should. It would help us all.

The Owl’s Content Philosophy:

“I don’t plan on saying something that someone hasn’t previously thought at some point in history. That may be impossible. But I’ll only say what I come up with on my own. If I read the it somewhere else, then I’m not paraphrasing it.”

There you go.

Less noise, echo and status quo.

More original ideas, confidence and passion.

Of course, you can avoid the challenge, keep saying “there are no rules” and embrace mediocrity.

- Integrity. People share other people’s content because that person shared their content first or because the relationship they have, not because of the value underneath. This is the biggest contributing factor to noise we have to tolerate nowadays.

- Credibility. If you think that everything is worthy of sharing, then nothing is.

- Audience. There’s a limit to how much noise people will put up with. Keep losing integrity (see above) and we will leave you.

- Respect. Integrity and credibility come before profit (money or other kind).

- Weak Ties. This is what online networking is 95% about. Being noisy means losing the connections that you worked so hard to have (even if they don’t tell you).

- Time. You are wasting ours and yours.

Forget the tools that make sharing easy, it must come with effort. That’s the only guarantee for value to beat selfish motives.

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Think iPod.

That’s simplicity, that’s perfection.

It’s possible that many launches are the keys behind future success.

In fact, it’s possible for expectancy to boost your brand forever.

Anticipation is a powerful tool, and impatience a strong human emotion.

There’s no peak without peeks.

No wondering without mystery.

No audience without community.

Bottom Line: Don’t be another launch that nobody is thinking about. Be the launch that everybody is hoping for.

Because they have nothing to win.

The moment personal interests come into play, word of mouth is ruined (which is why “sponsored” spread won’t scale).

That’s when we all become skeptical.

People rate higher books than movies.

There’s a simple reason for this: books demand more time and energy.

After watching a bad movie, is common to say “This was a complete waste of time”.

After reading a book? Not so much.

Because we force ourselves to like it. Even if we don’t, we defend more a crappy book than a crappy movie. All that work can’t have been in vain.

But what if it is?

The interesting part is that this can apply to almost anything.

The more time they dedicate to you, the more they will defend you.

Not because you are great, you don’t have to be. They just don’t want to look stupid regretting it.

Bottom Line: It doesn’t matter what your audience spends time on, as long as they do it.