When I read Seth Godin’s book Tribes about discovering the group of people who want/need you to lead them I understood it and appreciated it. But I think I didn’t get it in quite the same way as I did this week.

the problem

As many of you know my podcast the Amateur Traveler was in the running for a Lonely Planet Blog Award. This competition had two phases. The first phase was a popularity vote and the second phase was a vote of the judges. I was confident I would do well with the judges but I have always hated the popularity vote. In high school I was neither a social pariah nor was I class president. As a shy person by nature I hate shilling for votes. But this was a contest I wanted to win. When the contest started I was about 500 votes down before I even knew I was in the running. I sent emails to my small email list, twittered, got my friends to twitter for me, brought it up at work, mentioned the contest on my podcast and I closed the gap some but I was still way behind.

the power of mailing lists

But then my friend Craig Martin of the Indie Travel Podcast sent an email to his mailing list and rocketed into first place. So I went to my email box and found the emails for people who had written me about the show and ask them to vote for the show. A funny thing happened. They voted and in great numbers. When I send a twitter message my typical response rate is around one click for every 50 people who follow me. This was more like one response for every 3 emails. That was amazing enough but the next part is what really surprised me.

my tribe

No one wrote me and said to stop bothering them. Instead many people wrote emails like these:

I voted for you. I love your show, although I don’t get a chance to listen to it quite as often since my daughter Chloe was born in August. The first time I did listen to Amateur Traveler after she was born the topic was Acadia National Park. That was a great surprise because we live in Maine (about 4 hours south of the park), and although I’ve done a lot of traveling around the country and in Europe, I haven’t been to Acadia since I was 8 years old.

It was a nice reminder that even though our travel experiences will be different now, there are some great places to explore right in our own state. I also purchased a state park pass recently, and can’t wait for summer! Now if only this snow would go away…

Thanks for taking the time to put out the show. It is appreciated.

Nicole

I voted for you and I really enjoy the show. Best of luck.

Thelma in Missouri

Done. It´s a pleasure to help you and give something in return for your great podcast

Jose

Good luck Chris! Thanks for all the great shows and all the time and effort you devote to them.

Lottie

Thanks for the email. Already voted for you – both from home and at work, so the site won’t accept another email from me.

Good luck, and thanks for your continued dedication to the podcast. I thoroughly enjoy it. You continue to open up small pieces of the world to those of us who have an interest in travel but limited opportunity. It truly is appreciated.

Thanks, again, and keep up the good work. Blessings,

Gerry

Thanks for the email? People were thanking me for asking them to do me a favor. People were actually glad to help. Oh, that’s what Seth Godin meant!

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn’t an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

Building a tribe is about providing value. When people appreciate what you have been doing for them they are glad to return the favor.

postscript

Ironically, I won the vote handily and then lost the judging. The judges were not in my tribe. I can live with that.

Writer’s block comes eventually to all bloggers. You know you want to write a “7 ways to …” style article and you can only come up with 5 ways to do anything. What do you do? Like the song says, I get by with a little help from my friends. In this case my friends were my twitter followers.

The article I was writing yesterday was “7 Things You Should Pack/Bring When You Travel To San Francisco“. Once you have mentioned to take warm clothing and a camera, what’s left? So I sent out a tweat:

I am writing a blog post on “7 things you should pack when you travel to San Francisco”. I am a few short. Ideas?

Within about a half an hour I had five good responses from slightly over 1000 followers. That is about a .5% response rate, but I only needed two ideas and I had at least one I would not have thought of.

MikeTRose @chris2x Allergy medications. For some reason, East Coasters like me get the sniffles in SF.

That made perfect sense to me with the dampness of San Francisco, but it was outside my experience so it would not have occurred to me.

I think there are takeaways from this experience:

• I might do this in the future even if I can come up with 7 things on my own. Why not write a list of 9 things instead.
• People helped me out so I gave them credit because fair is fair.
• I had a 3rd takeaway a minute ago, what am I missing?

I am still surprised and flattered when someone asks my opinion so that is probably why I said yes when I was offered the chance to evaluate a cell phone handset for a major cell phone manufacturer. As the blogger/podcaster I did not really do my homework. I assumed that the company was asking me because I do a travel podcast. So I assumed the handset was one of their new video enabled phones which I was anxious to try out. That was not the case. The phone was a music player phone aimed at a young audience. This is not the sort of product that I blog about. I am not the sort of blogger/podcaster that writes for their target audience so it was obvious that they did not do their homework either.

When I finally got around to trying out the phone I was also surprised that the music library contained some surprising choices. Am I a prude? Yes, probably I am. I was not expecting that their list of music genres would include a very Anglo-Saxon word for the sex act. I was expecting to see words like rock, pop, or blues. When you are sending a phone to someone to review who also happens to produce a bible study podcast I also wonder about the wisdom of songs with artist labels like “Anti-Christ”.

I don’t feel the need to slam the phone or the phone’s maker because I think this mismatch was partly my fault for not asking more questions. I also feel no need to endorse the phone as I think this is a product that might be a bit “off-brand” for me. A little more homework on my part or theirs might have prevented what was a waste of time and what could have been a PR disaster.

I have changed the slogan for the Amateur Traveler to:

“Amateur Traveler – The Amateur Traveler is a travel show that helps you find the best places to travel to. It includes both a weekly audio podcast and a twice monthly video podcast. It also includes travel news and resources.”

This is an ongoing effort to refine the description of the site.

When I created the Amateur Traveler site I made what I think is a classic error. The tag line I used at the time was “travel for the love of it”. I was trying to explain why I had chosen the name Amateur Traveler. But what I did not do is explain to someone why they would want to come to this site at all. It is difficult when you are familiar with a website to see if with the same eyes as someone who has never been there.

How many seconds do you have before someone forms an impression of your site?

Try showing your site to someone who has not seen it before and ask them what this site is about and why someone would want to go there. If they can’t tell you, you have a problem.

What is a visitors first impression?

Since a visitor may not stay long on your site their first impression may be their only impression.

What draws the eye of a new visitor?

Show your site to someone and ask them before you show it to point to the first thing that gets their attention. It may not be as accurate as eye tracking software but it is a lot cheaper.

I love English. I know no language better than my native tongue. But as someone who thinks in a logical fashion I personally know of at least 4 languages where I can probably spell with better results (German, Turkish, Italian, Spanish) than in the eddies and riptides which comprise English spelling. Personally I blame the Norman invaders and the creator of the first commercially successful English dictionary, but that is a rant for another time. If you couple my inability to spell with the fact that I never took a typing class you could easily conclude that it is unwise to release me upon the blog reading public… and that is no doubt true. But blog I do. Fortunately the Mac has a few tricks up its sleeve to help someone just like me.

1. Check Spelling While Typing – I can turn on a feature right here in my browser (Safari) to spell check as I go. Right click (or command click in a text area to bring up a menu. From the Spelling and Grammar menu select “Check Spelling While Typing”. Now as I type, words will be spell checked.
2. TypeItForMe – This wonderful tool can allow me to create aliases for frequently typed phrases like the name of my most popular podcast so that I can type “atp” and get “Amateur Traveler”.
3. TypeItForMe 4.0 – The latest version of TypeItForMe can also correct my simple typos as I go. If I type “tihs” I get “this”. It also has the ability to replace misspelled words.
4. Speech – I am bad editor. My brain tends to correct typos and grammar errors when I read. But I am a much better audio editor. You can have the Mac speak any section of text. From the Application menu (such as “Safari” from within the browser) select “Services” then “Speech” then “Start Speaking Text” to have your Mac read back to you the selected text.
5. Google – When in doubt remember that the google spelling dictionary is one of the better ones. If you can spell the word close to the correct spelling, Google might be able to get you the rest of the way.

To see these techniques in action, watch the attached video.

It seems over the last few years main stream media has increasingly taken the position that main stream media is “professional” and that bloggers and podcasters are “amateurs”. When did “amateur” become a dirty word? I am an amateur, after all I have a podcast that proudly proclaims myself the “Amateur Traveler“. But what’s so bad about being an amateur?

The word “amateur” does not mean a beginner or someone who is bad at doing something, or at least it did not originally mean this. An amateur was someone who did something for the “love of it”. A century ago it was the professional who was under a cloud of suspicion as someone with impure motives.

Lets take the example of Jim Thorpe, sometimes called the “greatest athlete of all times”:

At the tender age of 24, Thorpe sailed with the American Olympic team to Antwerp, Belgium for the 1912 Olympic Games. Remarkably, he trained aboard the ship on the journey across sea. He blew away the competition in both the pentathlon and the decathlon and set records that would stand for decades. King Gustav V presented Thorpe with his gold medals for both accomplishments. As stated in Bob Berontas’ “Jim Thorpe, Sac and Fox Athlete”: “Before Thorpe could walk away, the king grabbed his hand and uttered the senta3ence that was to follow for the rest of his life. ‘Sir,’ he declared, ‘you are the greatest athlete in the world,’ Thope, never a man to stand on ceremony, answered simple and honestly, ‘Thanks King.’”

Thorpe’s glorious Olympic wins were jeopardized in 1913 when it came out that he played two semi-professional seasons of baseball. The Olympics Committee had strict rules about Olympians receiving monetary compensation for participating in professional athletics. Thorpe, who stated he played for the love of the game and not the money, was put under the microscope. Ultimately, it was decided that his baseball experience adversely affected his amateur status in the track and field events. His name was removed from the record books and his gold medals were taken away.

When Scientific American used to run a column called the Amateur Scientist from (1958 to 1978) they were not trying to encourage stupid people to build proton accelerators in their basements (Accelerator, proton. how to construct, 1971 Aug, pg 106). They were instead harkening back to the days of the renaissance man (or woman). It used to be encouraged for people to dabble in science out of a genuine interest without regard to what they did for a living. And why not, the most influential theory of the 20th century was proposed by an amateur scientist who worked as a patent clerk.

Mark Spitz was an amateur athlete as were all Olympic athletes of his day. One could be an amateur and still be the best. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are professional athletes. Jose Conseco was a professional athlete so a professional may not show professionalism any more than an amateur needs to be amateurish.

It is not my intention to try and swing the pendulum back to the days of Jim Thorpe or the early days of the internet when any hint of commercialism was seen as wrong. Rather we should see that whether or not a person is paid for their endeavors is not the sole measure of the value of their work. Edward R. Murrow was a professional journalist, but so was William Randolph “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war” Hearst. A professional journalist can make making money their sole goal or they can aim somewhat higher.

So let’s not, as if we could, strive for an internet void of commercial interests but instead evaluate work based on value and quality remembering that the Ark was built by an amateur, the Titanic was built by professionals.