*Imagine it’s 1956. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev famously declared that the USSR “would bury” all Western ambassadors.

This was a different time than we know now. Life was increasingly becoming black and white. You either sided with capitalism and the idea of freedom, or communism and the idea of equality. There were a few countries somewhat on the fence like France, but all in all, you knew where people stood. So you built up a big arsenal of nukes to show the other guy you were serious, or just sided with one of the few who had them.

Enter today. The U.S. is at war with fundamentalist militants across the world. The Soviets are no longer communists and their economy slightly resembles the Wild Wild West. China sells American Average Joes their toys from WalMart, and buys American luxury goods and treasury bonds. Europe is scrambling in the middle trying to work together in the EU, yet still maintain their separate identities. There really are no clear black and white lines the way there used to be. Oh, and a lot of people have nukes now–even developing nations.

OK, so enough nerding out about geopolitics. It’s no secret I’ve been interviewing at various companies about social media positions. Over and over, I talk to HR reps who really don’t get how the whole online world works. The good ones just tell you about the companies and turn the interviews over to the hiring managers.

A recruiter or HR manager isn’t going to understand how good or bad someone can be in the social media landscape. Like geopolitics, marketing isn’t black and white anymore. You can’t just say, “My ad or blog post had (x) impressions and (x) conversions, so it was a success”. No, unlike TV programmers, that blogger KNOWS you bought that ad on their site, and might even know you. They might ask you to guest post, or connect them to someone who can. The lines between who is actually a publisher and who is a marketer are very fuzzy right now, and that is good and that can also be bad.

In the old days, you advertised and were covered by publishers that worked in clearly defined silos. CBS did not and could not reference NBC’s material. You wouldn’t read a piece referencing an Economist article in Time Magazine. Now, bloggers reference each other’s posts regularly. They form alliances with and against each other. It’s actually quite dramatic and even comical sometimes. Sometimes they ignore each other altogether and just reference your content (yay!). And if you care about SEO, you have to care about bloggers. They are the ones who give you links.

So while building a nuclear arsenal of Twitter or Facebook followers can’t hurt, it’s not as effective as understanding how to maintain relationships within those mediums. For example, I might have 5000 followers and you can have 400, but if you are just a phone call away from someone with one million, you can kick my butt. That’s why social media is all about relationships. It’s about understanding the subtle nuances in a blogosphere rife with drama and changing alliances. And yes, Community Managers have to be identifiable and accountable people to somehow to really work these relationships. We aren’t brands with logos painted on our faces. That would be like preventing an ambassador to a country from ever using their real name.

Quit focusing on building your social media nuclear arsenal and actually listen for a bit. You might actually learn something.

*This photo references the famous “shoe banging incident”, which is not when this quote was actually said. Very interesting to read about though.

So Wired decided to publish this pair of breasts on their cover. After seeing it, Texas State’s Cindy Royal declared that after decades of reading Wired magazines and not seeing much about women who impress men with their brains and not their bods, she was breaking up with Wired.

By the way, I hate seeing this image on my blog but just wanted you to see how bad it is and why she isn’t just being too sensitive. Anyway.

I checked Wired’s Quantcast data. You’d think that Wired would skew very heavily male, but it really doesn’t. Only 59 percent of their readers are male and 41 percent are actually female. That’s why it’s so vexing they would jeopardize their relationship with these 41 percent. I mean, who wants to get caught reading a magazine with this cover in the gym, male or female? It’s worse than GQ and Maxim covers.

Chris Anderson responded by asking people if they actually read the article. The innovations covered were indeed amazing…but, doesn’t that mean they wouldn’t have to sink as low as publishing cleavage on the cover to get people to read it? I mean, it’s about how advancement in breast augmentation is improving stem cell research, which will help cure cancer and a host of other ailments. I can’t speak for everyone, but you don’t have to pull the sex card on me to sell a cure for cancer. What I can say is that Anderson did a great job of potentially alienating over 50 percent of the population. The Wired cover sparked controversy on sites around the web including the Huffington Post and Mediaite, just to pick up the morons who would not choose to pick up Wired had they not seen a digitally enhanced wrack staring them in the face. Smooth.

Just because something sells, it doesn’t mean you should sell it. It’s called having integrity and self-respect. It’s the same reason why millions of women choose to work hard every day and keep their dealings with men at a professional level rather than just putting the twins out on display to get a promotion. We know it could work–we choose not to go there. It is an unsound long term strategy.

So here’s my plea:

Mr. Anderson, I fit the target demographic for Wired both on income level and educational level. Your advertisers want to reach people like me. I’m kindly asking you to avoid publishing pictures of cleavage and half naked women on your covers. It’s cheap and embarrassing, and represents Condè Nast very poorly. It’s also not asking for much, really. If your advertisers don’t appreciate that such low-brow tactics scare off people like me who just want to read Wired in the gym without looking like Larry Flint, then maybe you should go after a different demographic so you can hit your numbers. People shouldn’t feel relegated to read your content in the privacy of their bathrooms.

Cheers,
Michelle

I get a lot of companies and organizations asking me to write for them. Writing doesn’t have to be hard to do internally, but it does take practice and a willingness to mess up before you get it right. I remember some of the first blog posts I wrote ever, and a lot of them consisted of throwing stuff up on a wall and seeing what stuck. I’m hoping to spare you.

Here are some guidelines I’d stick with as a startup with a limited amount of time/resources for blogging:
1.) People like lists because they are easy reads. You are reading mine now, so apparently it works.
2.) Keep posts under 500 words or less. Think about it: if someone is at work, chances are their boss doesn’t give them time in a day to read blog posts. So keep it short, to the point, and useful.
3.) Use analogies and paradigms people can understand. Pick a theme that makes sense to your audience and write along with that theme. It’s easy to meander when writing a blog post. Using analogies or paradigms will help you stay on point.
4.) “Make their ears burn”. Blogging is a social activity that behaves in a way that is similar to academia and footnoting. There’s no use only referencing your own thoughts because there are plenty of good thoughts out there already. Being a responsible blogger means you are conscientious enough link to back if you use them.
5.) Copy people whose blogs you like. Yeah, I said it. You copy UI, you copy website design. Before even touching your company blog, it’s best to read a bunch of them and figure out what style works for you. I read Copyblogger, ClickZ, Problogger, SearchEngineLand and Marketing Pilgrim before even starting this blog. I read others like Kathy Sierra and Hugh MacLeod and it changed more. If you don’t even have time to do that, you don’t have time to blog. That is okay. Maybe you could sponsor a blog, buy Facebook ads, or hire an ace PR firm. It’s okay not to blog, especially if you have amazing documentation that helps your users with your product if they need it.

If you don’t have money to advertise or do PR, and you can’t do marketing in house, well, please be a realist and get more funding. I’m not saying this to say that your software is no good. I’m saying it because if your software is good, you’ll want to make sure it’s being represented fairly and the people who would love to use it at least know about it.

I’m not going to lie. I’m pretty shook up. I had no idea there were men out there who would be so offended by me merely stating that women can be good at math and science too.

If you didn’t see, I merely mentioned to a TechCrunch commenter on this post about female entrepreneurship that my math SAT was, in all probability, higher than his. While this wasn’t the coolest thing I could have come up with, it was Saturday night, I was tired after babysitting a drunk friend, and it was in response to his notion that women somehow are not as good at quantifiable intelligence. I also mentioned that great leaders (since the post was about the lack of female entrepreneurs), can actually have a host of different skills, and generally surround themselves by people who make up where they lack.

What ensued was a barrage of comments about what an idiot I am for somehow believing women can be capable of the same tasks as men. I was called the “c” word, had my privies referred to as a “gash”, was called illogical, arrogant, angry, and a troll. Someone said that if I don’t like how my female body works, I can euthanize myself legally in Oregon. One commenter even blamed the decline of the economy on feminism and another said he would short sell any stock of a company with a female CEO.

If Michael Arrington and the people at TechCrunch really want to be heroes in this whole debacle and actually do want to promote female entrepreneurs, they should tell all those nasty commenters to piss off. Seriously. You aren’t going to get respectable women in your restaurant if there is a table of lewd, ape-like men in the corner who berate any woman who walks in the door. Mr. Arrington, how would you feel if you came to my blog, commented, and some woman called you a sexist, illogical freak? How would you like it if these women were not only upset at you for suggesting that they need to work harder, but they were actually calling you a d**k and suggesting you euthanize yourself? You would not want to come back, but would be very torn on this if my blog were one of the most influential blogs in your industry. You would expect that I would defend you especially if you were being perfectly reasonable. I would do that, because although I love a good healthy debate, I also recognize that stereotypical and unfair attacks solve nothing and hurt people.

Think about it this way–you are telling the apes to go away, so all the respectable people you like will come back. We want to, Michael. We totally do. I felt like I was doing a service to women by basically defending the notion that we can be intelligent leaders too. This morning I sat in my shower and cried for 20 minutes because those commenters exemplified the attitude that has made me feel like I cannot succeed in this market. I’ve worked my butt off my entire career, and I have innumerable horror stories about sexist bosses who were embarrassingly less competent than I was. It makes you defensive and question your own abilities. And unfortunately I’m not alone.

So I know I have to stand up for myself. I know I have to have a thick skin, compromise when it’s necessary, and just let the haters roll of my back. But can you do us a favor and at least call out the haters who literally add nothing to your conversations but nastiness? Can you take a stand against the band of chimpanzees who tear everything that is different from them to pieces, instead of requiring me to fend them off myself? If you really want to make women a part of your community, than show us because it’s really not that hard. We’ll come back.