The Middle Ages are quite an interesting era in human history. Probably what comes to your mind is knights in shining armor, damsels in distress, and Monty Python. Well, that last one is probably just me. At any rate, the knights and damsels are only a very small part of the story. Society was rather complex back in these times. Serfdom existed, nobles existed, the clergy was out there making everyone pay tithes. One thing that has always caught my interest is the old idea of paying homage. Here is a description for you:

“Homage is the most honorable service, and most humble service of reverence, that a franktenant¹ may do to his lord. For when the tenant shall make homage to his lord, he shall be ungirt, and his head uncovered, and his lord shall sit, and the tenant shall kneel before him on both his knees, and hold his hands jointly together between the hands of his lord, and shall say thus: ‘I become your man from this day forward [of life and limb, and of earthly worship,] and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear to you faith for the tenements that I claim to hold of you, saving the faith that I owe to our sovereign lord the king’; and then the lord, so sitting, shall kiss him.” from http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng330/ceremonies_of_homage_and_fealty.htm

Pretty heavy duty stuff, right? When you paid homage to someone, you were literally saying, “I’m yours, man. Whatever you want me to do, you’ve got it. Just give me a nice bit of land and we’re good to go.”

I think in some ways this concept has trickled its way into the online world, but I am pondering whether we pay too much homage or too little.

What does online homage look like?

I think it’s easy to create a relationship online that looks like the 21st century version of homage. For example, if you are fairly new to the online world and a person with a big following reaches out their hand and helps you out, you are going to feel darned indebted to them. I know this from personal experience. For whatever reason, a lot of people who were well-established in the online world helped me out when I was still an online newborn, and two years down the road, I still haven’t seen my gratitude for that subside. So, when someone does you a big favor, if you are, say, nice, you want to repay that favor. In the online world this means talking that person up, commenting on their posts, sharing their posts…you know the drill.

But there can come a point where paying this kind of homage can get carried away, right? For example, if a person starts sending out information that isn’t 100% accurate and they are called out for that (even nicely), you might get carried away and say that nobody should criticize your pal. You might be mean to other people because you perceive they are being mean to your friend. You might even close your mind to other opinions that vary from this person’s. You paid your homage to this person and that’s that. End of discussion.

Then again, maybe we don’t pay enough homage

There are certainly people out there who get caught in the idolizing trap. But I think it’s also fair to say there are people who wouldn’t know a ceremony of respect if it came up and whacked them in the face. These folks always present themselves as “self-made.” Their blog has comments because they started writing such awesome stuff. They have a lot of Twitter followers because all they did was tweet for 17 days straight, right? Regardless of how many people helped them out, promoted their work, taught them things, answered questions, or cheered them on, these folks climbed the mountain based purely on their own skills, wile, and charm. Homage? Hardly.

Is there a healthy amount of homage to pay?

The approach that has worked best for me is something I like to call reciprocation. It’s a revolutionary concept, and something that certainly would have been alien to our Medieval ancestors. I can map it out for you in a pretty easy formula. Hang on, let me get my blackboard out. OK.

You do something for me + I do something in return for you = Reciprocation

Phew. Alright, so, that’s basically the trick there. Now, you don’t have to be OCD about this. It’s more sort of a gut feel. I try REALLY hard, for example, to make sure I respond to comments that I get here on ye olde blog. You took the time to read and comment, I try to reciprocate that by responding in kind. I don’t necessarily need to build you a shrine, but quid pro quo. If you promote a post of mine, I try to share something that you do. Maybe not *that minute* but I try to make sure I let you know I appreciate what you do. Sometimes I fail at this, and that makes me feel bad. So I try to work on it. I don’t tend to mindlessly worship anybody, nor do I tend to ignore when folks take time out of their busy lives to give me a boost.

Reciprocation seems like an okay compromise, at least for me.

But maybe I’m weird.

*cough*

So what do you think? Do we pay too much homage online or not enough? Where do you fall in this crazy medieval spectrum? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dunechaser/1228875390/ via Creative Commons

Have you ever heard of Hildegard von Bingen? You might have heard her called Sibyl of the Rhine. Same person. Well, here’s the thing about Hildegard/Sibyl. She was one of those people who was good at everything. Among her accomplishments, she ended up writing at least 69 musical compositions (plus verse), 3 books of visions, and many letters to all sorts of correspondents. Hildegard created her own modified Latin alphabet, gained renown as a healer (she wrote a book about how to use different medicinal herbs to treat ailments), and was a respected woman at a time when this was almost an oxymoron. Indeed, although she has not been canonized, she is such a beloved figure that she is sometimes called Saint Hildegard.

You might think, given all of these accomplishments, that Hildegard would have been a pretty confident person. Maybe even a little full of herself. I mean, if people gravitated to you to hear your advice about things ranging from medicine to mysticism, you might feel kind of happy with yourself, right? Indeed, we experience this in the online world a lot. People come to our blogs, people tweet us with questions, and it’s hard to remember that we are still just our regular ole normal selves.

In the case of Hildegard, though, the world almost did not get to benefit from her amazing contributions:

But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen).

That’s right. As talented as she was, as respected as she was, as amazing as she was, Hildegard almost did not sit down to write anything. Even though she had so much to offer, and even though it ended up that writing brought her great joy and peace of mind, she almost did not begin to write. The world almost missed out.

What are you holding back?

One of the great problems in life is that we don’t always know what we can offer until we sit down and start to *do* things. A writer does not know how good they are until they start to write. A singer cannot know how good her voice is until she opens her mouth and lets the sound come out. A musician cannot know how good he is until he sits down at the piano and begins to play.

Hildegard would never have known her capacity to affect people if she had not made the decision to write, despite any feelings of worthlessness she experienced.

What are you withholding from the world? What are you holding back? Are you thinking about blogging but you’re not sure you’re a good enough writer? Are you thinking you’d like to start a business but you’re not sure you’re cut out for it?

There’s only one way to find out. Let me fulfill the role of Richardis von Stade (but you can call me Margie). Go ahead and try it. Write something down. Let a song come out of your voicebox. Let music play from your fingers. You might find that you’re a lot better than what your brain is telling you. You might find you have one heck of a lot to offer. Who knows, maybe you are the next Hildegard von Bingen of the blogging world or the business world. Maybe it turns out you actually are fantastically good at a lot of things. Maybe it turns out you have the power to affect, in a positive way, a whole ton people. Maybe your work, whatever that may be, will be remembered centuries or even millennia from now.

But you’ll never know if you don’t sit down to try it.

What are you waiting for?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/klaudi/5604377366/ via Creative Commons

Our final visit to the super ancient world for the History Lessons for the Social Media Practitioner Series takes us to Babylon in the year 1772 BC (or so). Hammurabi ruled the Babylonians for 42 years, and during that time, something inspired him to have some really important laws scratched on to 8′ tall rocks. We’re glad that he had this done, because Hammurabi’s Code remains one of the oldest known sets of written laws in the world. It’s a shame he doesn’t get to enjoy that part, huh?

The thing about Hammurabi’s Code that struck me the very first time I heard about it was that it was kind of…rough. Hammurabi’s Code introduced the world, for example, to the concept of “an eye for an eye.” In other words, if you gouge my eye out of my face, I can do the same thing to you, assuming I can see well enough.

Some of the specific laws contained in the code would be pretty helpful in controlling the online world so many many millennia later, but the punishments make me wonder if our behavior is really more reprehensible than I had previously thought. Here, let me show you what I’m talking about.

22. If a man has committed highway robbery and has been caught, that man shall be put to death.

Highway robbery. Well, you might think that this phrase would have nothing to do with the online world, but actually my friend Ameena Falchetto has experienced highway robbery first-hand. Would Hammurabi put the hammer down on her copy-catter? It seems so.

Now here’s another one. There is always a lot of talk about “a-holes” and “d-bags” in the online world, and one might rightly call this namecalling a series of “low blows.” Interestingly, Hammurabi had a lot to say about hits below the belt.

• 202. If a man has smitten the privates of a man, higher in rank than he, he shall be sourged with sixty blows of an ox-hide scourge, in the assembly.
• 203. If a man has smitten the privates of a patrician of his own rank, he shall pay one mina of silver.
• 204. If a plebeian has smitten the privates of a plebeian, he shall pay ten shekels of silver.
• 205. If a slave of anyone has smitten the privates of a free-born man, his ear shall be cut off.

Now, who wants to monitor the online world and make sure that for every low blow, there is appropriate retribution? This might reduce the online drama a bit, right? I think it’s a good idea, anyway.

218. If a physician make a large incision with the operating knife, and kill him, or open a tumor with the operating knife, and cut out the eye, his hands shall be cut off.

This is a lot of pressure to put on a physician. I wonder if Hammurabi would be equally tough on people offering business or marketing advice online. If your advice doesn’t work, I’m afraid your hand needs to be cut off. Ouch. Then again, it would be interesting to see if the advice being offered would suddenly change radically, right?

Of course, many of the laws contained in the Code of Hammurabi have to do with slaves and animals…oxen and….asses. Well, I suppose if we were mean-spirited we could draw some parallels there, but I don’t want to make a false claim, which would result in me having to ” leap into the river” and hopefully not sink, which would prove my innocence.

See? Hammurabi is making me behave better online already.

So what do you think? What can we learn about ourselves here in the 21st plugged-in century by reflecting on one of the first sets of laws ever to be written? I think it’s sort of refreshing to see that humans really haven’t changed that much. We’re still building houses that fall down. We’re still stealing each others’ spouses, pushing over oxen, and doing all kinds of other dumb stuff. Is that comforting, or an argument against evolution?

You tell me!

Sources for Hammurabi’s Code: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp and http://www.commonlaw.com/Hammurabi.html

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/un_cola/64424869/ via Creative Commons

When Alexander (the artist later known as Alexander the Great) was a kid, his mother told him that he was the son of Zeus, who had impregnated her while in the form of a snake. Barring any physiological explanations, which frankly I don’t want to think about, this had to be a pretty heady moment for young Al. In addition to discovering who his dad was, Alexander also came to realize, in studying the Iliad, that he was also related to Achilles. That Zeus, he got around. Achilles naturally was a hero any boy could admire, but to think that Achilles was a distant relative, well, now you can see how Alexander would feel really confident as a little boy.

Whether it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, luck, or a combination of a lot of things, Alexander started living out his most cherished dreams at a very early age. By the time he had reached the age of 30, Alexander had conquered the Persian Empire, had become a Pharaoh in Egypt, had been declared a living god (being named a Pharaoh had more perks than Klout does now), and had even defeated the Indian empire. But Alexander did not die a fulfilled man. He did not even die a confident man. A few years before his death, one of his friends got tired of Alexander’s bragging and said, “Your father is behind all of your success!” Alexander killed that guy. With a spear. Ouch.

After each success, after each great event, Alexander found that his ambition only kept him wanting more. After conquering India, Alexander wanted to keep going to the edge of the world. He started commanding his officers to marry Persian women so that the cultures could become enmeshed. He started truly believing that he was invincible, and did many things to try to prove it. He was never satisfied. It was never enough. There was always another hurdle. There was always another obstacle to overcome. There was always a little more glory to grab.

In Social Media, you can play the role of Alexander the Great

Let’s be honest. It’s pretty hard not to get full of yourself when you’re in the online space, right? I mean, let’s just get that out there. You can write a blog post (like this) and nobody is talking over you, nobody is interrupting you. Most people who bother to leave comments will at the worst make it thoughtful. Many people are complimentary, so not only are you writing but you’re also getting nice feedback. Where else does THAT happen? On Twitter, people respond to you talking about what you are eating, what you are reading, and where you are going. On Facebook, you are perpetually cheered on as you post your goals, post pictures of your food, or do pretty much anything else.

It’s kind of ridiculous.

But like Alexander the Great, we all face a trap that is waiting to make us miserable. How? Well, let’s say you’re a new blogger. You’ve been writing and posting for three months and the only entity commenting has been a spam bot from the Netherlands (hey, it could happen). Suddenly, you write a post that gets 3 comments. Wow, now THAT is a rush. But then when you sit down to write your next post, you’re thinking about that last one. Why did those folks comment? How can you get MORE people to comment? So you try to figure out a formula, right? You want another success, but you want it to be bigger. If your next post goes back to zero comments you can feel pretty let down. But then a few weeks later you write a post that gets 20 comments. WOAH! Now that is your new level of success, but reaching that milestone isn’t a good place to stop.

For every success we find in the online world, there are more doors leading to successes that other people have experienced. If you get listed as a great blog on a site, you want to be up higher the next time. If someone gets an award, you find yourself wondering why you didn’t get it. When you do get that award though, it’s not enough anymore. Now you want to win it 3 years in a row.

It never stops.

And as a result, your presence in social media can become perpetually unfulfilling, consistently unsatisfactory, and it can even become an embittering experience. Eventually these negative feelings can cause you to lose interest, and while you might not literally die young like Alexander did, your online presence just might.

Stop the trap

OK, I admit, I heard Admiral Ackbar’s voice as I typed that. Sorry, but it’s true.

Anyway, the fate of Alexander the Great is not an inevitable one. There are ways to make sure that your online work remains a pleasant experience.

First – enjoy where you are. Think about the fact that you are able to self-publish your writing whenever you want, and pretty much for free. That’s something we don’t think about very often, but we really should. Think about the fact that even if one person comments on your blog post, that’s a person who may not know you at all who read your work, found it interesting, and commented on it. That’s pretty amazing, right?

Second – get over your “I need to be better than you” complex. The longer I stay in the online world, the more I realize that longevity is an advantage. The longer folks stick around, the more people they get to know, and the easier some things become. If you’re newer, you have to wait. Be patient. Walk your own path.

Third – Don’t let the satisfaction of compliments go to your head. You’re not a living god. You’re a person who types stuff and then reacts at other peoples’ reactions. I mean, I realize I’m going all Morpheus on you here, but truth is truth.

You can be happy where you are. You can be happy with the level of success you are at right now at this minute. So let yourself enjoy it. Don’t go down the path of Alexander the Great. It is the way of perpetual dissatisfaction, and who wants that, anyway?

First Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kudumomo/5885936899/ via Creative Commons

Second Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/2965462060/ via Creative Commons

Once upon a time, there was a great civilization that we now know as the Anasazi. Sadly, this name, in the Navajo language, means “Ancient Enemy,” so that’s not a great way to be remembered. Regardless, this civilization, which flourished in the 1200s BC, was a magnificently rich and interesting culture. They were great basket weavers, they were great architects, and it seems they had a complex religion and society.

All well and good, certainly. There have been lots of great civilizations over the course of human history. But the really interesting thing about the Anasazi is that it seems they one day just decided to up and leave their high cliff dwellings and their busy cities, which were located at the “Four Corners” area of the US, where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico touch. This isn’t like the Incas, who were killed off by Spanish conquistadors. Although there is some evidence of violence and warfare, it doesn’t seem like the Anasazi were necessarily booted out of their city. They just up and left.

Now why would they do that?

Answers to the mystery

The explanation as to what happened to the Anasazi has been haunting archaeologists for centuries. This 2008 article from the New York Times summarizes a lot of the hypotheses that are out there. There was a big drought. There was a “Little Ice Age.” Maybe the soil got worn out from too much farming. Maybe all of those things combined with pressure from other societies made the Anasazi decide to move. Of course, unless archaeologists find an ancient note left behind explaining what the deal was, this will likely forever remain one of those unsolvable riddles.

Are you inexplicably abandoning your social media communities?

Now, let’s fast forward a few millennia or so to the modern day. People are building communities not out of cliffs but out of little pieces of the digital world. Some of these communities may exist on a person’s blog site. Some people build really solid Twitter communities. Some people try to build their community across all platforms they find themselves on. People put a lot of time into these communities. Think about a blog site. You design it. You slave over what your homepage will look like. Will you have black font against a light background or will you reverse out and have light copy against a dark background? What commenting system will you use? How will you entice people to share your content? Lots of questions. Lots of complex relationship-building with the people who visit you.

And yet, if you scan the web, you come upon a lot of Twitter accounts, a lot of blog sites, that are just randomly abandoned. Sometimes it seems like the person was going at a pretty good pace, posting 2-3 times a week (or more) on their site or tweeting pretty darned regularly, and then *BOOM* all of a sudden there’s just nothing.

What happened to them? Archaeologists of the future may have just as much of a hard time figuring this one out.

How can you avoid the Anasazi fate?

We all, I think, come upon times where we sort of would like our blog sites to die. These guys are so demanding! We all, I think, long for the days when we weren’t so “plugged in.” It’s tempting sometimes to think, “Well heck. I’m just going to abandon all of this and do something else.” The problem is that if you are using social media for business purposes, those abandoned sites can raise eyebrows in addition to questions. Is your company still around? Are you still with that company? Why did you stop? Were you not getting a good enough response? Did your business really pick up?

If archaeologists are right, the Anasazi did what they did because of two primary factors – their resources got depleted and they got pressured by other people. Those same exact problems can cause you to abandon your online outposts. So how can we tackle and prevent those problems?

Your resources

Before you create extravagant plans for your online existence, whether for you or for the company you work for, make sure you have people who can do all of the “stuff.” Make sure there is enough time so that nobody feels overwhelmed. Make sure there is a plan so that you know when your resources are getting depleted versus when you are in really good shape. Make sure the online climate, which changes as much as the real one, it seems, doesn’t make you sway to and fro. Have a mission, plan for it, and then stick to it.

Ignore the pressure and keep your eyes on the prize

As for the pressure from other folks part, as hard as it is, you have to learn how to let that go and do your own thing. Keep making those beautiful baskets.Keep building your cliff dwellings. Keep doing what you want to do. There will be people who embarrass you because they are so complimentary. There will be people who will try to tear you down. There will be people who seem to be immovably indifferent to you. Carry on. Easier said than done, but don’t let those external pressures inspire you to abandon your network. That’s a bad trade.

Don’t be like the Anasazi. Don’t melt into the ether of the online world, leaving evidence of your presence for other people to figure out. Stick around. Keep building. Hang in there.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevorvangorp/49857496/ via Creative Commons

For as long as I can remember, I have been enchanted by the Civil War. I have found it morbidly fascinating that families could split up and kill each other, and yet armies across rivers would chat about how much they wanted to go home. I have always been enamored of Abraham Lincoln, and find it amazing that he was extremely unpopular in the North as well as the South throughout the duration of his presidency.

There is a lot to study in the Civil War. There were innumerable technological patents issued. Medicine, by necessity, took great strides – the idea of sterilizing the surgery environment was born out of that series of tragedies in our history. Military history, too, was altered by the American Civil War. All of these new, immensely powerful weapons were introduced and handed to soldiers right in the middle of battle. But the commanders of those armies – they only knew what they had learned at West Point. They knew the bayonet charge, the cavalry charge. They knew that to defeat an army you had to come right at them. This knowledge, these things that were seen as “givens,” explain in part why casualties ran so high as the war dragged on. People were charging at armies that had minnie balls. People were charging, literally, right into firing squads.

As historian Shelby Foote says in the series, the weapons were far beyond the tactics.

The same holds true when it comes to Social Media.

Social Media and business

These days, it seems, we are approaching advertising and marketing in the same way we always have – as sales pieces. Some companies are bringing these traditional methodologies to Twitter and Facebook and Blogs. This is like trying to use antiquated military strategies when all of the technology has changed, and literally, companies that approach Social Media incorrectly will get blown out of the water. No one expects the hard sell on Twitter unless it’s 100% clear that’s your reason for being there, and even then you might find yourself entirely ignored.

We have created these new technologies before understanding the strategy needed to make them work. I think of Jeff Goldblum’s line in the first Jurassic Park movie. Companies are moving into Social Media because they can without thinking whether they should. Well, he didn’t say that exactly, but you get the point.

Our weapons are ahead of our tactics, and our marketing strategies are suffering for it.

Social Media and society

All of this also holds true when thinking about Social Media and its effect on our modern society. There are about 27 posts I could write about this topic (and maybe I will), but for now, consider the following, and let me know your thoughts about them.

Social Media has created new job opportunities, but we don’t really have names for those new jobs

Social Media has created new ways to communicate, but we don’t really have a name for this new method of communication (is it networking? is it friendship?)

Social Media has created new ways to unite – look at what happened when reports of protest started coming out of Iran and Egypt.

Social Media has also created new and powerful ways for us to abuse each other, and we have no way to police that. We have no control. The weapons are ahead of our tactics.

The Learning Curve

By the time World War I approached, it had become apparent to most military strategists that the era of the bayonet charge had ended. World War I saw trench warfare and the use of poisonous gases. By World War II, of course, war had entirely changed again.

I don’t want to see our learning curve happen in parallel with countless missteps or tragedies. I don’t want to see companies fail because they are trying to blast out ads via 140-character tweets. I don’t want to see more people die because we have these powerful modes to communicate with no way to control them.

I am not asking for an authoritarian controlling mechanism in either case. But we need to stop and think, for the sake of our businesses and our society. What are we doing with this “Social Media” thing? It is a revolution. It is an evolution. That means we have to change with the technology. We need a road map. We need someone to write it. We need tactics that keep up with our technology. We need a strategy that can make the most of our actions. Right?

Note: This post was originally written on October 1, 2010. It has been refurbished for a new project I’m working on called History Lessons for the Social Media Practitioner.