I don't vacation well. I'm not sure why but I'm working on doing better. This week I'm away with my family on vacation yet as a sole proprietor I still feel the pressure to keep tabs with work, news, blogs, and just the general connectedness I'm accustomed to.

If I'm honest with myself the tension I feel is as much about an unnecessary need to control as much as anything so here are seven things I've decided to do (or not do as the case may be) on vacation to disconnect this week:

1. Only one blog post for the week (and this is it)
2. Minimal if any Tweeting
3. Minimal if any Facebook
4. Check email once a day if at all
5. All phone calls go to voicemail
6. Don't check the usual blogs I read
7. Don't read the usual email newsletters

 Oh, and if you leave a comment, I probably won't respond to it until next week either.

Sometimes people take a classic (or in this case classical) song and try to modernize it only to ruin a very good thing, but in this case cellist Steven Sharp Nelson does a great bit of arranging and video hackery to create a really intereting modern rendition of the Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1: Prelude. I wonder if he got a deal on buying those shirts in bulk?

Most of us have heard this a hundred times by now: social media works best when real people are connecting and engaging real people.

Yes, we know that a huge benefit of social media for marketing in business is that you get a sense of who people are.

Yes, we know it's about joining the conversation and being authentic.

Yes, we know that you can listen and respond in ways never before possible.

I believe Mitch Joel refers to it as the humanization of business and that seems to sum this idea up best. If you've been around any marketing conference, discussion, or book in the last few years you've heard some of these things. Perhaps you even believe it. I do.

But what about people who get it in the head but don't in their heart? What about the people who see this as the way social media works but they don't want to change?

The Options: Be All In Or Fake It
Their options are to avoid social media or to fake it and I think many businesses want to fake it. I can't help but think that we're beginning to see cases of faux-thenticity, people who understand that a personality and genuine connection works best but choose to create a false personality or disingenuous social strategy.

How Do You Know If You're Faux-thentic?
Here are three areas to evaluate your own social media authenticity:

1. Faux-thenticity is acting like you're care but you don't. Does your organization really care about helping the customer?
2. Faux-thenticity is acting like you're there to engage but you're really there to sell. Is the point of every engagement about selling or do you do things to earn trust with no immediate or apparent way of knowing that it's going to directly pay off?
3. Faux-thenticity is outsourcing your social media efforts so you can feel good about doing social media. Do you have people who don't know you, your company, or your customers serving on the front lines of your social media efforts?

The problem with faux-thenticity is that it's not going to work. It might yield some short term gains but in the end something's not going to feel quite right. Your customer will realize they're talking to a figment of your imagination.

It's not worth faking it. Though the immediate pain is changing, that won't be anything compared to getting caught faking it...and if there's anything we now know about social media is that the likelihood of getting caught is higher now than ever.

3 Year Match: Mobile search on Google is now three years old and in this recent blog post the Google team shows that it's trending similarly to how Google's standard search grew in its first three years. This is a big sign for continued mobile growth.

12%: From this study: "38 million U.S. adults ages 18-80 (or 12% of the total population) say they discover new products and brands or refer to social media before making purchase decisions. That's up 14% from 33.3 million just six months ago."

34%: A recent study of millionaires from Fidelity Investments shows that 34% of them use social media professionally.

You're probably familiar with the Susan Boyle story and perhaps the Paul Potts story too, both from the show Britain's Got Talent. If you're like me you may be skeptical of the "next Susan Boyle" kind of thing but I'd like to introduce you to Sung-bong from the Korean version of the show. He's got a story and a talent that are worth hearing. Enjoy this amazing story from Korea's Got Talent.

I regularly harp on the idea of needing to think differently about marketing and promotions once you decide to adopt a social media strategy. Here's another way to think about it if it's still a little fuzzy to you. Consider this:

What if every promotion, campaign, or marketing event were a handwritten letter.

The letter written by traditional marketing is formal but nice in a "let's get down to business sort of way."

Traditional marketing spends the bulk of the letter telling of its uses, features and benefits. The letter is all about them and what they do.

Its P.S. is a coupon or promotional code.

The letter written by social media is different.

Its letter is not about features and benefits, rather it's about me and something I find interesting. I'm the subject of the letter.

The P.S. is different too. It's a mere mention of something I would be interested in. They just happen to sell it.

Every day our marketing efforts write a letter to the people we want to reach. We either spend the letter selling or we spend the letter giving them something they'll find valuable. Examine your recent marketing "letters" and see who the subject is. Are they all about you or are you letters about (and for) the people you want to be reaching?

In social media the pitch doesn't need to be more than a P.S. If you've done your job well that's all you should have to say.

10% - In a sign of what likely strikes fear in the hearts of cable TV executives, a new study from the Consumer Electronics Association shows that 10% of current cable TV subscribers are planning to cancel their service this year and use the Internet as their main source of getting content.

20% - The average Facebook user doesn't actually know 20% of his/her friends. Interesting. I think this is right in my case.

53% - In a recent survey, 53% of the respondents said they would value information from someone they perceive as an expert over the information about the same thing from a friend. This survey pushes against the idea that the advice and recommendations from a person's friends has the most influence a company, brand, or service can get. Interestingly enough, the survey also showed that 48% of the people would be interested in friending those experts.

This video reminds me to get the fishing poles out to take the kids fishing soon. Enjoy this 3 year old's first catch:

There's a new movie coming out this weekend called Super 8. It's produced by Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams, some big names for sure. Until today I had never heard of it. You probably hadn't either. It turns out few of us had and that was an issue leading into opening weekend which was scheduled to begin tomorrow. Paramount Pictures was concerned too so they decided to release the movie a day early in select theaters across the country and announce the early release via Twitter.

I could make this post about the power of Twitter to make or break a movie and generate buzz but I think I'd be missing the bigger point here. The bigger issue is this: why did Paramount need to scramble to make a last minute Twitter push in the first place? I think it was positioning. Here's what I mean: watch the original trailer below that came out a year ago:

When you watch this trailer, what do you expect from the movie? Creepy alien film for the sci-fi crowd? Yeah, me too. That's probably not most of us and therefore we didn't have friends talking up this movie.

It turns out this film is much more than the first preview would lead you to believe. Here's the reworked trailer that came out a few months ago:

It's a totally different feeling here, don't you think? The new preview has more of an E.T. or Close Encounters human feel than a creepy Cloverfield or sci-fi fan only feel. The movie is the same but the positioning is very different. This is a movie I would want to see. The first one isn't. Positioning is the only thing that changed.

It's easy to think a lot about marketing and customer service and the products themselves. These are all important and necessary topics but positioning is huge and easy to miss. The next time I think I'm working on/with a good idea, a good product, a good company but it's just not getting the movement we feel like it should I'm going to think back to positioning. Great products positioned poorly may never see the light of day. It's a sobering reminder that we marketers have a responsibility as great as the people who develop the products or services we seek to promote.

Yesterday John Ellis mentioned a local restaurant on Facebook. The restaurant, Café Rakka, was featured on the Food Network program Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives last year and the episode featuring Café Rakka still airs occasionally.

John commented on how much he loves the restaurant. I happen to not like the food but that's not the point here. Café Rakka has a Facebook page like most restaurants do. They have almost 800 fans and they have people commenting regularly on their page but Café Rakka doesn't respond to any of them. They don't say thank you for the kind words nor do they respond to the criticisms of their service. It's like they just put up the page and haven't looked back at it. That's not good.

A Common Commenting Problem
This isn't just a Café Rakka problem. This is a fairly common issue for companies and other organizations who jumped on Facebook but didn't really intend to use it for all it can (and should) be used for.

So much focus on Facebook seems to go into what you, as the page owner, are going to do with your status updates but there are fewer people concerned about responding to the fans who comment. If you could only do one, which would you do? I would choose the commenting over the updates. Here's why:

• When you respond to a comment you show you're listening
• When you respond to a comment you show that you want to learn
• When you respond to a comment you show that you want to connect
• When you respond to a comment you show that you don't assume things are perfect the way they are
• When you respond to a comment you show that you value people being willing to reach out to you

When you don't respond to the comments on your Facebook page you're saying the opposite of all these things:

• I'm not listening to you
• I don't want to learn from you
• I don't want to connect with you
• I think we're fine and everything we're doing is perfect
• I don't value your attempt to give us feedback

Responding to comments on your Facebook page is one of the easiest things you can do so give it more priority. Spend 50% less time working on what you're going to say in your status updates and transfer that energy to responding. It's easy, it's valuable, and in the long run you'll be glad you did.

Café Rakka was given an awesome opportunity with national television coverage. It's clear from their Facebook page that people are seeking them out after having seen the show. Now the restaurant needs to listen and respond to the very people they need most.

With the Memorial Day holiday last week I skipped the usual stats on Monday but we're back in action here this week. Enjoy this week's Monday's Stats:

60% of mobile users click an advertisement weekly. This research shows that mobile users are more willing than the average internet user to click on display advertising.

66% of e-book "power buyers" are women. An e-book power buyer is someone who purchases at least one e-book a week and uses a device like a Kindle or iPad to read the e-books. This was an interesting summary statement: "Today's e-book power buyer...is a 44-year-old woman who loves romance and is spending more on buying books now than in the past."

Facebook likes are leading to sales: This post from Search Engine Land was loaded with interesting stats about businesses who have added the Facebook "like" button to their website and seen positive results. Here's one that really stood out to me: "American Eagle added the Like button next to every product on their site and found Facebook referred visitors spent an average of 57% more money than non-Facebook referred visitors."

The city of Grand Rapids, Michigan took offense at a Newsweek report earlier this year that named them one of the top dying cities in America. The good people of Grand Rapids decided to show the world that they're far from dying. The result was this video, a very long and complex lipdub of Don McLean's "American Pie." Well done Grand Rapids. Well done. 

Some bloggers I know read a ton of blogs and find that it gives them ideas for their own blog. If that works for them that's great, but I have found some of my best content ideas come from times when I'm not at my computer watching an online video or reading a blog at all. Here are seven places I find content inspiration for the blog:

• Conversations with clients and the questions they ask or concerns they express. (The Google Adwords verses Facebook ads post came from a client conversation.)
• Conversations people who are trying to understand social media but don't. (This is always good to force me to articulate ideas more clearly.)
• Reading books. (I get about 20 ideas in every Seth Godin book I read.)
• Attending conferences. (The TedX Nashville event was a good one I attended recently.)
• Going to new places like a museum, concert, or event. (I'm planning to go to several museums this summer and excited to see what ideas come from my time there.)
• Meetings with friends who are in the same business. (The "straddle the fence" post comes to mind as one that falls in this category.)
• Paying attention to the regular moments of life. (My "dog poop" post comes to mind on this.)

What about you? Where do you find inspiration for your blogging?