I’m awesome, so every now and again, someone will say to me, “I’ve heard great things about you.” I’ll reply, “Of course. I’m awesome.” The person to whom I am speaking makes some sideways comment like, “I see you’re humble, too.” All sarcasm. Great. But here’s the thing: since when is being humble a good thing?

I’m here to tell you that humble is for suckers. Here are some reasons why.

1.

You spend a great deal of your life trying to convince people you’re awesome. You try to copy behaviors of people you think are awesome and tell jokes other people told you so that people will think you’re funny. You groom yourself so you’re not repulsive, bathe so you don’t stink, and get your hair cut so people don’t mistake you for the unibomber. Your mom taught you manners so you wouldn’t offend anyone, and you otherwise spend most of your time trying to like yourself and get others to do likewise. Why on earth would you then waste all that effort by using your words – the most tangible things people have to really recall impressions of you – to tell them that you’re NOT awesome? Do you have a Sisyphus complex?

Tags: being awesome, being humble, compliments, humility, self-esteem

There has been a lot of discussion about the future of the social media strategist – especially on social media, on Mashable (The Future of the Social Media Strategist), and others. Well, I can’t exactly be quiet about this as it is something that impacts what I do for a living. I am not a social media strategist, though the core of that job is something that I do. I am a digital marketer. I take the goals of the company, break it down to strategies, and then tactics, and engage in those marketing tactics to get the results defined in the earlier steps. Marketing is about creating results by communicating. It’s content, whether words, pictures, video or something else. Social media is often a big part of it, and I’m glad because it’s work I enjoy.

Social media is fun for me because it’s so ubiquitous, instantaneous, and personal. It’s a 1-to-1 relationship with the world. It’s full of surprises, and it’s full potential is far from being realized. Evolving, exciting, engaging. Some pretty great E words.

Tags: Bizzy, digital marketing, Quora, social media, strategy, Twitter

Chris Brogan suggested in an article on Open Forum that among the improvements you can make in your email marketing this year, you can move that silly link that’s always at the top to view the email in a browser to the bottom of your email and spare that space from doing your email housekeeping. Instead, you can use that to communicate something of actual value to your recipient. I like this idea, but recently, I noticed another reason to like it: my gmail email list.

Gmail gives me the sender, the subject line, and then the first few words of the email in the email list view. When you see what the first few words are when you put “Click here to view in your browser” at the top, you really begin to understand how much this sucks. And some intros are worse than others.

Tags: Chris Brogan, email marketing, previews, templates

Maria Lorena Lehman is an architectural designer and author who writes on a blog called Sensing Architecture. I do enjoy her articles, and I am always taken (but not surprised) by the parallels between great architecture and great web design. In a recent post, Lehman outlined the Top 10 Tips to Great Museum Exhibit Design. Each of her points, it seemed, were talking about web design with little need to change nary a word. Here is the list verbatim.