Meet the Author

Programming

• why programmers aren't paid according to their productivity.

Design

• The decade in design by Good Magazine

Usability

• According to Jakob Nielsen, usability is like cooking. Anyone can do it.

Psychology

• What Makes Us Happy? The Atlantic's most viewed online article ever.

Check back next Monday for some good reads and visuals, or follow us on Delicious for a heavier load.

This year we got tired of keeping an e-mail list we didn't use, so for the holidays we finally decided to kill it...literally. Take a smack at him if you dare.

Apps

• Want to know what terrorists might do next? There's an app for that.

Social

• YouTube tries to bring users home: 46 years of video shared on Facebook daily.

Mobile

• Mobile Phones Become Essential Tool for Holiday Shopping

Check back next Monday for some good reads and visuals, or follow us on Delicious for a heavier load.

The idea that brands need to be talking to their customers online is over-hyped. It's a watered down image stitched into the banners of social media revolutionaries across the globe. Upon further examination, any marketer will find that the most effective way to engage your customers through social media isn't to become one of them -- to share, talk, and think aloud -- but rather to give them things to share, talk, and think about.

In Adweek's recently announced "Best of the 2000s", the editor's choice for best digital campaign of the decade was Nike+, which wasn't a campaign at all -- at least not in the traditional sense.

The top three reader's choice picks for campaign of the decade also veered away from the typical campaign model -- Subservient Chicken taking first place, trailed closely by BMW films and Will.i.am's "Yes We Can", which wasn't even commissioned by the Obama party.

But, it's not the evolving definition of campaign that's so telling about these choices. What's really telling is that, in light of how heavily these campaigns effected the social media presence of the brands, they weren't even considered social media campaigns.

Sure, Nike+ has its own Twitter account, but it played only a tiny role in the spread of Nike+ through Twitter, which was primarily powered by fans who created apps like Twiike, and an even smaller part in the campaign's success as a whole.

Michael Lebowitz called the campaign a giant "merging of product, platform, and comms." What really made Nike+ a stand out campaign was that it was one of the first products to "bake in" digital and social. The product had viral distribution in its DNA.

The reader's choices for digital campaign of the decade were even more telling as a variety of branded content in the form of songs, videos, and a microsite topped the polls. Based off the reactions and discussion they generated throughout the social sphere, these campaigns weren't just the success stories of digital marketing at large, they were the social media triumphs of the decade as well.

The fact of the matter is that social media campaigns, ones based around brand stations like fan pages and Twitter accounts, are largely failures. Besides the Whopper Sacrifice, can you think of any social media campaign that just made you stop and say, "Damn. That was good."

Neither can we.

That doesn't mean that social media is a fad. It doesn't mean that brands don't belong. It doesn't mean having a social media presence is useless -- it's very valuable and increasingly necessary. What it means is that if you're out for the real opportunity that social media affords, you've got to stop talking and start doing.

Build social media into your products, your marketing, and your brand. Create content that is interactive, compelling, and social to the core. Then you can talk about it, but the chances are that few will hear you -- they'll be listening to your customers, who far outnumber you, speak about your brand for you. Isn't that what this is all about?

We've all heard social media experts tell us to listen before we speak. That's a nice bit of wisdom to hold on to, but be careful not to let it boil down your view of social media to listening and speaking. Leave plenty of room for doing.

If you really want to get better at what you do, become a generalist. Sure, having a specialty is great, but being a generalist who can generate, communicate, and execute a range of ideas is even better.

When it comes to creative work, being a renaissance man has its benefits. Having a rich knowledge of culture, art, science, and history all play an important role in the ability to produce creative ideas. Artists use this general knowledge as a foundation that influences their work.

What many people don't understand is that being creative isn't just for artists -- it's for everyone. No matter your role within your company, chances are that opportunities exist for you to break out of the box and propose creative solutions to the problems and opportunities facing your business.

And that's when it gets tough.

Coming up with new ideas is easy. People dream up ways to make their work-places, homes, and communities better every day, but they rarely implement them, because implementing new ideas is hard.

So, what does that mean for you? It means the day of the generalist is upon you. That doesn't mean there isn't room for improving the skill sets you already have. It means that if you're like many people, you've reached a point of diminishing returns, and you'll get better faster by learning something new.

As interactive marketing advances, it's become harder and harder to be a generalist. Skills are required that demand time and energy to learn. Developers, designers, and strategists all use a variety of skill sets that often limit their growth in other areas. But increasingly we find that, even as it becomes harder to generalize, there's increasing value to being able to implement your own ideas rather than asking someone else who knows how to implement it for you.

Regardless of whether you work online, I suspect the same is true for you. So, go learn something new. You'll be glad you did, and your boss will be too.