Today, I’m speaking as your brand advocate.

If I’m your brand advocate, we, in some significant way, have made a connection. Your unique message has fought through the din of chaos and clutter and found it’s way into my heart, my mind and even my soul. It’s now a part of me. So engage it with care.

I’ve had the honor of hearing and seeing some very good keynote speakers throughout my career.  Some have left me with tears in my eyes or a fire in my heart while others…  have…  well…  just left me.

On the positive, I’ve seen tremendous motivational speakers like Hajj Flemings (@HajjFlemings on Twitter) and Angel Maiers (@AngelaMaiers on Twitter), innovative business marketing and branding speakers like Michael Wagner (@BigWags on Twitter) and Liz Strauss (@lizstrauss on Twitter).

Every time,  I make it a point to get a few minutes, face-to-face with the speakers to make an introduction – often times just so they can put a name to the face “@TheBrandChef.“ And every time I approach these speakers, they are engaging, honest and forthright when it comes to offering advice or simply talking about the day’s event.

That’s TRUE brand engagement.

That’s how to build a connection to brand advocates and help build a sustainable brand in the minds of your advocates!  WHY? My personal take-away? As your advocate, I feel like I am a bigger part of the event and with the conversation and even a signed book (or whatever swag) I feel I’ve made a connection that meant something to both of us.

So what’s with the Brand Posers?

Yeah, I know, kind of negative, but I have to call ‘em for what they are. I’m talking about the people that stand up and preach brand and personal connections and engagement, but carry themselves in a way that is quite the opposite. They POSE. And they suck.

I take branding personally.  I am, after all, The Brand Chef.  So when I am inspired by a speaker from my industry (or out of for that matter), I have the passion to pursue engagement and connection at ANY level possible. When this happens, it’s electric. Not just for me, but for my work, my career and my own brand advocates. And I’d hope that for the speaker, the brand I have subscribed to, feels a bit of that spark as well.

So, on the negative, when the correlation of brand “performance” to brand engagement is SO far off, it makes me…  well, write posts like this. Because, if I hadn’t had a disappointing experience with a “Brand Poser,” I wouldn’t be relegated to vent. I wouldn’t be forced to wave my blogging fists in the air. I wouldn’t have felt dismissed, disappointed and trivialized.

Being TRULY ENGAGING takes more than a handshake and a kiss in the air by my cheek.

For every clammy palm you have to press and for every Polaroid you have to fake, there is going to be 1000 more that you’ll miss.  And THOSE are the misses that matter. The misses with the people that count, the misses with the people who care, the CONNECTIONS with your brand advocates is what will get you where you want to go. So at least make an effort.

Your accolades, your book and the Armani suit have NOTHING to do with your brand.

So as your brand advocate, I offer this miniscule seed of advice, “Pay attention to those that you look down upon, because they, like you, are climbing the same hill… And years from now, they just might know how to spit further than you.”

Hello, my name is Andy…  I’m a Social Media Addict. (all together now…  Hellooooo Andy!) Can you see it – some big, mental-ward-like facility filled with a circle of gray, plastic chairs…  smoke hanging heavy in the air like some support group meeting (enter Nurse Rached)?  Is this what we’ve come to?

Sure.  I AM a social media addict.  I’m also a procrastinator.  I’m a last-minute Marty.  If I have 12 hours to get a post written, I’ll start it on the 10th.  If I have a week’s worth of vacation, I start planning events on the 5th day of it… (like now) It’s a sickness…

And then entered SOCIAL MEDIA…

(Da, Da, Duuuuuuuuuuuummmm!)

The BIG time-waster…  How was I going to read or educate myself / my family / my clients when there was Farmville and Mafia Wars to manage? Who was going to manage my clients’ marketing plans, media buys… OH THE HORROR…

I had tweets to read! Now I’m REALLY going to get behind…

I say, “Horse pucky!”

Social media and productivity CAN go hand-in-hand. As a matter of fact, they can help support one-another.

Six years ago, I read maybe a book a year (maybe).  Today I read about a book a week (give or take the occasional audio-book on the way into work). Can I attribute that to social media?  Not entirely, but I can say, if I didn’t start educating myself pretty quickly (reading, researching, engaging) I was going to be left behind!

Social media works.  You just need a plan.  You need to be diligent about tasks that make you “productive” versus distractions that make you “mush.”

So, how do I manage in intake of information with my propensity for procrastination?  The answer is simple. Tasty, bite-sized, manageable “Edu-tizers.”

Instead of taking on books, movies, articles as a “gotta-finish-it-all-right-now” type Mega Meals, I’ve taken my diet of books, newspapers, magazines, social media and television (yes, I still learn from television) and broken it all up into small, but frequent portioned snacks that I take in throughout the day.

Appetizers to Edu-tizers…  easy to remember and fun to say…

Yes, just how your trainers tell you to maintain higher metabolism with food intake, I’m doing the same with media, social media and education. With this approach, I avoid the mind-numbing coma of a 200 page marathon read or a 2 hour span of The Discovery Channel to more manageable segments of information that my brain can digest and still be nimble enough to move on throughout the day. I also avoid hours upon hours of social media time-wasters… (you know who you are).

Simple? So, how do you start?  Or better yet, how do you cut back to a manageable level?

Below I’ve listed a few “best practices” that have worked for me.  It’s better to set up your own program, but maybe this will help those that can’t seem to manage time and intake with logic and diligence.

#1 Where book stores and libraries fall short, there’s social media!
SHOCK, GASP! — okay get that out of your systems.  I buy books – at least one every week.  But the social media wave/tsunami has hit.  If you’re not in a boat that floats or at least a dingy with a good compass, you’re going to be left back in the devastation.

There are volumes upon volumes of information being put out into the social media waters every day.  Why not tap into the biggest wave of information known to human kind since the discovery of spoken word? When I can’t get my “fill” from books, television or any number of publications at the local magazine rack, it’s just a click and search away.  You just need to be willing to look. It takes less time than you think.

#2 – All good things in moderation! (VERY IMPORTANT)
Facebook, MySpace, et al have their attractive (and addictive) features, but remember that social media is about the sharing of information.  If you spend hours a day on one site, you’re bound to lose contact with your productivity, your interests, your LIFE.  Diversification is key!

I use Facebook (for instance) strictly for social and business-social communication.  I get on to post what I’m up to, to learn what friends, family members and coworkers have going on in their lives, respond (only if necessary), and then I move on (about 10 minutes of my day).  No games. No surveys. No nonsense.

#3 – You must feed the monster.
I had a professor that, during the first week of classes, would get to know which students over-engaged (raising hands on every question, writing 20 page compositions instead of the requested five, etc. – you know ‘em…), and then, for the rest of the semester would ignore them. Why?  Because it was his intention to drive the conversation to those that needed it the most. The quiet ones.  The ones that sat in the back of the auditorium hoping to learn through osmosis (me).  If you don’t participate in the conversation, you’re not going to get anything out of it.

With that professor in mind, I spend about a half hour each day (often more) sorting through blog posts or comments that I intend to add value to (sometimes marked days/weeks before to come back to later).

Is it presumptuous to think that what I have to say is important enough to post it to someone’s blog or Facebook page?  Heck no! That’s what SOCIAL media is all about. With that single post or comment, I’ve started a conversation that will, in turn, further the learning process and be of value to both parties.  Does it happen every time?  No.  But for those that really know how to engage, they are some of the most educational conversations I’ve had since… college!

#4 – Find your “Happy Place” (then file it away).
When I first started this “journey,” I subscribed to every feed and every alert under the sun.  From “Bob the Australian Cat Wrangler” to “The Marketing Gods of Melrose Place,” I wanted to read it all!  But I learned one important thing…  time is an unforgiving bitch!

Sure, I’m “friends with” or “connected to” thousands of people via social media, but I have no question that I can’t absorb all of the conversations going on at all times.  Nor would I want to. I honestly couldn’t care less about Bob from Australia’s cats and the huge dingo they devoured last night (okay, maybe THAT would make me pause).

Break your input streams up into logical lines of conversation. While I have access to thousands of stories, I only read the ones that will make a difference in my life, my career, my well-being.  So, I have my feeds broken up into the following categories:

• News
• Branding
• Marketing
• Leadership
• Management
• Education
• Personal Fun
• Music
• Photography
• Feed-Specific (generally client-based)

The only categories I read (thoroughly) every day are “News” and “Feed-Specific.”  Otherwise, I skim, mark for future research or commenting and I move on.  This takes me about a half hour every day.  It’s a great way to start the day and a great way to wake up my brain.

#5 All posts have their place:
The social media waters get pretty muddy from time-to-time.  It’s constantly churning and dredging up things that, well, just don’t need to be seen / read / heard.  Think of it this way, if you don’t want “it” displayed on a billboard in the middle of the town square, delete, delete, delete!

Do I use Facebook for business?  Certainly.  But I separate what I do for my company and clients from what I do personally.  Don’t bring your work home with you and don’t bring your home to work with you.

***

God knows how many blogs / online publications I read on a yearly basis (right now, my Google feed reader has 1,373 RSS feeds pumping knowledge through my keyboard and into my brain…).   And without social media, I wouldn’t be able to provide my clients (or my family) with the quality information and support that I do today.

Don’t get me wrong, social media can be a slippery slope. But with the right plan and just a little discipline, you can make it work for you.

How does your social media diet stack up?  Are you a lean, mean fighting machine or has the weight of the social media tsunami washed away all hope? (please make the metaphors stop)…

Hope to see you in the social media stew!

Keep Cooking!
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

What’s your passion?  Is it your job?  Do you paint?  Play an instrument?  Are you lucky enough to get paid to do what you love?

That’s okay…  I don’t either.

In college, I thought I was going to be the next superstar cartoonist – the next Berkeley Breathead, Bill Watterson, or even the freakishly odd Gary Larson or Robert Crumb.

In retrospect, I had a good start. I had a small following for my cartoons – mostly girlfriends and fraternity brothers; but the word was starting to spread.  Their parents were requesting copies of my panels.  Some (of the less offensive) panels were being reviewed by King Syndication.  I even had a professor from The University of Iowa contact me asking if he could put one of my panels onto the last page of his biology mid-term as a “stress-reliever”  for his students. Nice!

For a brief period in 1991, I was living the dream…

Then, I started listening to people.  I took suggestions (gasp). I “commoditized” my art – my passion.  I kowtowed to the masses. I stopped being creative.  I stopped trying to surprise.  It stopped being fun.

So, I stopped cartooning… I put down my pen and refused to do another silly panel.  I always intended to start it up again, but one thing led to another and, well, we’ve all heard it before.

Then, a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this post from Brand Autopsy.  I immediately re-posted my thoughts on their video as well as ordered the book, “Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys To Creativity“ by Hugh MacLeod.  I devoured the book in about 10 lunches (about the only time I get to read these days), all the time, Hugh was making me think back on my “more creative” days.

Hugh is bizarre, sarcastic, brilliant and pragmatic all at once.  His blog, gapingvoid.com, was an outlet for his passion – drawing cartoons on the back of business cards – which was quite unique in itself.  But then you add his view on corporate nonsense, marketing, social media, social networking, communication and dating, and it becomes hilariously addictive. He took his blog, the wisest and wise-ass-est of it, and made it into a perfect, creative self-help manual… just for me.

If you have a passion, a dream that you want to or wanted to pursue, “Ignore Everybody…” is a great place to start.  It succinctly provides a “how-to” on fostering the creative inspiration that led Hugh MacLeod to create gapingvoid.com and turn his professional  and personal world upside-down - in a good way…  It’s kind of a Cinderella story, but Hugh gives great reason and forethought to his success.

Here’s a little nugget that really got me thinking about my own passion:

Chapter 10: Everybody has their own Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven.  But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snowline, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

So, after reading the book, I put it down and immediately registered two new domains that will hold my past and future cartoons, illustrations, and musings.

Will I “make it big” like MacLeod?  Who’s to say?  But I’ll start by ignoring everybody…  and listening to my passion.

What’s your passion?  Painting? Accounting? Pan flute? Are you doing it right now?

Keep Cooking! (your own brand of passion)
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

Do you know anyone that you’d call a “Go-Getter?” Yeah, that guy/gal that always seems to be working on getting results at virtually any cost?  Sure, I know ‘em quite well. I know, because I have always been one… A “do-er,” as one employer labeled me.  I wore it like a badge of honor, holding my head high as if I’d been knighted by the Queen.  That’s all I knew.  That’s how I defined my work days and eventually, my personal brand.  But it always seemed to take so much effort.  So much time.  And “getting” rarely received equal return, let alone a satisfactory profit.

If you’re wondering why that work seems so much like…  well…  WORK, maybe those efforts are being focused too much on the end result and not the path that gets you there.

There IS a path to success, and the authors of The Go-Giver, Bob Burg and John David Mann, see it much differently than I or most other Go-Getters do…  did…

Burg and Mann made me ask five simple questions:

1. How do I add value every day?
2. How do I serve those around me?
3. Do I place others’ interests as a priority – even to my own?
4. Do I relate to others genuinely?
5. Do I expect the same in return?

The story of The Go-Giver follows one of these “Go-Getters” on a journey of realization that giving and sharing can be MUCH more profitable than he previously expected.

I have been called a Go-Getter.  I don’t think I want to be called that any longer…

********

On that note, this week is the Meals from the Heartland packaging event in central Iowa.

Starting this Thursday, September 3rd and going through the 7th, church organizers, nursing homes, schools, businesses, housewives, children, and anyone else that you can think of will merge on downtown Des Moines, Iowa; bringing hearts, hands, and the passion for helping others to Hy-Vee Hall to package meals for those around the world less fortunate than us.

Meals from the Heartland is a non-profit organization that annually coordinates and administers the biggest food packaging and fundraising event in the United States. For five days, volunteers of all ages, races, and religious beliefs gather, side by side, and scoop, drop, pour, and seal millions of meals for distribution to starving communities around the world.

In 2008, Meals from the Heartland packaged over 4,000,000 meals.  This year, by the looks of the amazing influx of volunteers and in-kind donations, they’ll be well on their way to matching and surpassing that amazing number.

Your support would be appreciated. You can (for a VERY short time) still Volunteer to package.  Or a donation to help buy the supplies is always a good way to show your support.

To Volunteer, please go to this link.

To Donate, please go to this link. (Only $25 funds over 100 meals!)

With that, go be a Go-Giver.  Make your path to success rewarding for you and everyone around you!

Keep Cooking (for everyone around you)!
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

We have a long weekend coming up and I wanted to pick your brains for some good reading material. In recent years, I’ve constantly tried to keep a handful of books on my “To Read” list, but lately I’ve had trouble finding the time to search out and discover new material.

So, I’m leaving it up to you.

What have you read lately that…

A. Inspired you to be a better person
B. Motivated you personally / professionally
C. Made you laugh / cry
or
D. Twisted your idea of… (insert topic here)

Get it? I want you to give suggestions on what should I read next.

In turn, I’ve listed five of my all-time favorite books for you – with the idea that when we share knowledge we become a better community.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie
Always the top of my list… Originally given to me by my friend and mentor, Mike Wagner (White Rabbit Group / Own Your Brand). It’s a fun, yet startling eye-opener that will inspire you to rethink how creativity can be integrated into the “corporate world.”

The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier
Kind of an obvious one – seeing as though I’m The Brand Chef – but it’s seriously the base of my branding perspective and one of the most dog-eared book in my collection.

Made to Stick, Chip & Dan Heath
Ever wonder why some ideas “Stick” and others fade away like last week’s meatloaf? Chip and Dan Heath have created a wonderfully structured path to assure the “stickiness” of your next idea, marketing plan, or advertising campaign… Constructed from academically-tested theories and proven methodology, they take the techno/psycho-babble out of the equation for all of us to put to use in our next campaign. (Trust me, it was hard enough for me just to write that…)

Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
One of a handful of non-business books I’ve read this year, “Scissors” is painful and amusing all at once. In a masterfully crafted memoir, Burroughs narrates some of his own personal triumphs and failures growing up in a… well… dysfunctional family (to put it mildly). Emotive and disturbing, Burroughs’ writing shows you a perspective of mental illness, alcoholism, and dysfunctional family-life that very few get to see.

When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, John Ortberg
Have you ever wondered your fate in honest, realistic, and spiritual terms? Ortberg, using the “game of life” as a metaphor for our “earthly” lives, neatly sorts out what’s fleeting and what’s permanent in God’s kingdom. Being “Master of the Board” is not the point. Winning the game of life on Earth is a temporary victory… Not my typical read, but an eye-opening conversation that contrasts well with my venture into Augusten Burroughs’ world.

As you can see, I have a pretty eclectic reading list. I welcome all ideas / genres… And I look forward to your suggestions. I will report back as soon as I’ve pick one…

Until next week…

Keep Cooking!
Andrew B. Clark
– The Brand Chef