Who knew that the straw that broke the camel’s back would be carried there by a stoat, much less a stoat in a rather dapper kilt?

I don’t want to write about this beer – about whether or not it’s a beer, or whether or not it should be packaged in a squirrel, or anything. I’m on the side of things that, I believe, would make me a “hater“, even though I think I have fairly reasonable views. I do think that this is the most striking photography of roadkill that I have ever seen, and also I have a secret love of stoats that.. well, I guess is not so secret anymore.

What I want to write about is how fascinating I find it that BrewDog has apparently worn out their welcome on extreme beers so quickly. It’s really pretty amazing. Less than a year ago they were the new darlings of the craft beer industry. This past week, you’d think that they had made a beer made with dead stoat, not packaged in one. I think it’s a really interesting lesson.

Certainly, BrewDog is still getting a lot of really great coverage from mainstream media, but mainstream media continually shows their inability to report about craft beer. They still include things like how many Budweisers that would equal or use wine experts to talk about this new beer fad. Make a splash that will sell a couple of papers or make people keep their cable news on for more than a few minutes and the mainstream media will flock to you. In this case, I think that BrewDog deserves it. They have certainly made a statement.

I’m not sure that I think that BrewDog deserves the ire that it is receiving from craft beer enthusiasts, but I think I know how they got there. If I may:

Over-exclusivity: Craft beer geeks love hard-to-find stuff. Like any comic book with Superman #1 or baseball card collector looking for that Mickey Mantle rookie card, there’s prestige to be had amongst peers for those who can get their hands on rare beer. Why else is there such a hullabaloo over Dark Lord? No doubt, it is great beer. But there are many comparable imperial stouts on the market that are much easier to get your hands on. They don’t have the exclusivity.

With Tactical Nuclear Penguin, Brew Dog created their fair share of exclusivity by having a limited amount of a high end product and by being located in the farthest northern reaches of Scotland. It’s a real pain in the ass to get the product out of there, especially if you happen to live in the U.S. (which appears to be their primary market – I’d be interested to find out how much beer they sell in the U.S. vs. the U.K.). Somehow, TNP seemed like it was a fairly reasonable cost, up front. In the end, I was surprised that the bottle I partook of was only 12 ounces, but hey – there’s a price for exclusivity, and that price was ~$75.

Sink the Bismarck seemed like it carried on the joke, and actually got good reviews, but the price went up. And, of course, this happened again with The End of History leaving most beer geeks to wonder:

What’s the point of spending your time creating a beverage that nobody will ever drink?

and

Is something exclusive worth having if it’s specifically designed to be exclusive?

If a baseball card is release with a misprint, it becomes an immediate collectible. The value of the card goes up because the baseball card company will correct the misprint, thus making the misprinted card hard-to-find. The value of the card rises in the hands of collectors, but the original cost of the card was just the same as any card.

If baseball cards started getting released with intentional misprints, and sold by companies at a premium because of the exclusivity of said misprint, I think that the value – in the hands of collectors – would drop significantly.

Products become collectibles if everybody has a chance to attain said item but only a few do. By pushing the envelope like this, I think that BrewDog has actually pushed itself outside of realm of beer geek collectibles, simply because the product is not readily available to the common man. It’s, “Buy this if you’re rich.”

What I don’t think that BrewDog understands (based on their comments/responses to critics) is that people aren’t angry because the product was made, and most of them aren’t even angry that it’s packaged inside a dead animal. They’re angry because they’ll never get to try it. They never had a chance.

Gaudy Self-Promotion:

I like the BrewDog guys. I think they’re funny, and I think they make some good beer, even though I don’t think they push the envelope nearly as much as they think they do. I was surprised, upon meeting James at the Craft Brewers Conference this past year, that he seemed kind of shell-shocked and nervous. Maybe it was jet lag. I expected a little more Trainspotting, a little less polite Brit.

I dislike their videos.

Why? Because they make me laugh, they’re well-done, and I can tell that they know it. They’re always so fucking cool. It’s not irony and sarcasm that doesn’t carry to America, gentlemen, it’s the lack of self-loathing. Watch a few weeks of normal American sitcoms for a while to find out what kind of depressing drivel constitutes our national pastime (ie – watching television from 6PM – 11PM) and you’ll understand.

Okay.. really: That the product releases seem designed to be marketing campaigns for the brewery and, specifically for James and Martin and their costume rental outlet, rather than to actually promote a product available for general consumption is what irks. They’re funny, but the only thing they tell me is that you’re so cool for having made this product, and I’ll never get it and also, you’re awesome. It’s hard to swallow. I’ll keep watching them because they make me laugh, but they’ll make me cringe a little each time.

Responding to critics: Biggest. Mistake. Ever.

Look, fellas: You are pushing the envelope on the extreme beer department. In this case, you’ve packaged a $1000 beverage inside of roadkill. Could you not foresee that this would cause some sort of a stir? It doesn’t matter if it’s a joke or you guys are goofing around. By responding to critics (with a numbered list on BeerAdvocate, a.k.a. snotty critic central), you leave us with one of three basic assumptions:

1) You had no idea that this product or the manner in which it was packaged it would cause this type of response, (which, frankly, raises some doubts about how much you’ve thought through product development) and you are honestly responding with surprise at how it’s being received.

2) You knew damn well that this product would be controversial and that responding to your critics in the fashion that you are is some sort of calculated part of your marketing.

3) You’re just making all this up as you go along.

Please, take this piece of advice from a nerd: Don’t feed the trolls. You knew that you’d get shit back about this. Why? Because you’ve been getting shit back about everything you’ve done pretty much since you opened. Responding only does two things. It gives people more ammunition and it makes you look like you’re either clueless or a dick. You’re the best representation your company has – you’re not doing yourself any favors by attempting to go point by point with anonymous douchebags on the internet. They have nothing to lose. You lose face, especially since you’re so effortlessly cool in your videos.

There are a lot of things you can do when people start to talk shit about your product on the internet. Direct response suggesting that they don’t understand? Low on the list. Real low.

All in all, BrewDog is, of course, going to come out ahead in all of this. Sure. They may have lost money on each stoat. They may lose cred with quite a few beer geeks who have watched this all unfold, but they have received an untold amount of international press which will probably end up selling enough 5 AM Saint and Punk Dog IPA to people who have never heard of them to make it all worth it… for now.

It’ll be interesting to see their next product release, how it’s handled, how it’s received, and how long BrewDog will be referenced by people outside of the industry as the “dead squirrel beer guys.”

Here, I become yet another irate blogger venting his disbelief and anger about the mind-boggling idea behind Drink This, Not That.

If you’re not familiar with it and are too lazy to click the link (fine by me), let me sum it up for you:

Americans get 25% or more of their daily calories intake from their beverages, this book is a guide that allows you to still drink everything that you want, but do it in a “more healthy” way. In this case, more healthy means – strictly – lower calorie, lower carbs. Why people around the craft beer industry are getting irritated with it are because of things like you see on the right here.

Indeed. Sierra Nevada Bigfoot certainly is the carbohydrate equivalent of 12 Mich Ultras. You can’t argue with it. But it’s a non-sequitur argument. These are not comparable products. Oh, yeah, sure.. sure. They’re both beer, but in the same way that Bartles and Jaymes “Fuzzy Navel” and Dom Pérignon are both sparkling wine.

I guess what really bothers me is the focus of these books is not about making more healthy choices, it’s about making the same shitty choices you’ve been making, but with less destructive products. It’s not, “Don’t eat that giant basket of french fries, eat this salad!”, it’s “Don’t eat that giant basket of french fries, eat this giant basket of french fries!”

Look fatass, here’s your problem: back away from the french fries.

Quick secret, and I’m not trying to brag or anything, but last year I lost 40 lbs, and I would never… and I mean never dream about replacing my awesome craft beer with Mich Ultra. You know what I did? I ate less and got off of my fat ass and exercised.

This theory that Americans somehow can’t control their own consumption is insulting. As if they’re somehow saying, “When sitting down to consume an entire extra large pizza in one sitting, remember to buy the one with low fat pepperoni.”

You know what 12 Mich Ultras instead of 1 Sierra Nevada Bigfoot is? It’s binge drinking. It’s over-consumption. It’s the misguided notion that, somehow, more of something cheap and crappy is better than less of something of high quality. It’s exactly the misguided notion that gets us eating over-sized Whoppers and liter fountain drinks instead of taking the time to actually eat something that tastes good and is better for you.

But for $3.00, I can’t get a hamburger that big anywhere!

Right – and maybe you shouldn’t. You’ll buy a lot fewer pairs of fat-legged sweatpants that way, Captain Wheezy. Do a cost analysis on your trips to Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and triple-bypass surgery and see where you come out in the end.

So, here’s my take.

Drink This: One high-quality great-tasting beer that you will greatly enjoy.
Not That: Twelve flavorless pints of empty calories.

If anything, you’ll spend a lot less time peeing.

We interrupt your normal beer blog content for this important public service message.

Dear Beer Internet,

Let’s talk about hash tags. You know what I’m talking about when I say hash tags, right? I mean the little number-sign-phrase that you’re using at the end of your Twitter post. Those are hash tags. Here’s an example:

@PenandPint Any Carolinians heading to the Beer, Bourbon and BBQ Festival in Charlotte tomorrow? #ncbeer

That “#ncbeer”? That’s the hash tag. You’ll note that it’s clickable. It’s clickable on the Twitter web interface, Tweetdeck, and almost every other Twitter client, too. It opens up a search. Go ahead – try it. Don’t be afraid.

Cool. I want to talk to you about them because they’re distracting. Well-used hash tags are good references. Poorly used hash tags are clutter. They’re difficult to quickly parse, especially on a mobile screen, and they reduce the value of your 140-characters. If I had to read your tweet more than once to try to figure out what you said, you failed at Twitter.

In other words, I’m trying to help you, here.

Now that we know what hash tags look like and what they do when you click on them, let me tell you a little about where they came from.

Hash tags are a form of taxonomy and classification adopted by Twitterers from information science. The use of tags was probably introduced to Twitter through people who were used to using them in blogging. Many forms of blogging software (including the WordPress blog that you are now reading) allow post tags for classification, different than the “Category” classification that also exists. Hash tags tend to be more specific than categories, though in some cases they are the same, or similar, words.

Classification through tags is what is considered “bottom-up hierarchy” vs. categories which are generally “top-down.”

Let’s take a moment to talk about that.

“Top-down” refers to a system in which categories are broad and pre-assigned. Once a thing (blog post, twitter update, etc.) is created, you would then assign said thing to one or more existing categories. It is then categorized. If you were to look up the category, all of the items that you assigned to the category would appear. For instance, this post is categorized in “media” and “meta” on my blog, since I’m talking about (social) media and it is rather self-referencing (meta). These are categories that I have set previously and I tend to smush all existing posts into my category structure. On rare occasion, I’ll create another category because I feel like I need one.

“Bottom-up” refers to a system in which categories are created based on the tags assigned to items. If a tag is used frequently, it essentially works as a category, since it can then be used to reference a large amount of content. If a tag is used infrequently, it is ineffective as a category, since the tag only refers to itself at which point it is ignored. The strength (and weakness) of bottom-up architecture is that it is flexible and dynamic. Categories are fluid and can change based on the information in the system and the frequency of tag use.

Take a moment to scroll all the way down all of the items on my sidebar (to the right) and take a look at my tag cloud. In it, you’ll see the most frequent tags I’ve used on the site (the ones in larger type have been used more often). It’s a big list, but it is not, by far, all of the tags I’ve used, and it’s missing anything that I’ve only used once, you’ll see some one-timers listed at the bottom of this post.

Twitter hash tags have evolved from this bottom-up hierarchy of tagging. They are generally used to categorize your Twitter post on the off-chance that someone wants to find that particular topic again. As an example, I have a column on my Tweetdeck that is every post that happens to mention ncbeer (minus the hash tag, because it’s not strictly necessary). Another craft-beer related tag that you might be familiar with is #gents. There are a fair amount of random items that pop up under #gents, but for the most part, they refer to the The Fellowship of Gentlemanly Gentlemen.

There are two main reasons to use hash tags on Twitter.

1) You are categorizing your tweet. Your tweet has to do with #ncbeer or is meant to reach all of the #gents or is in reference to an event (Craft Brewers Conference: Chicago), a city that you’re in (examples: #avl is the city tag for Asheville, NC, #rva is the city tag for Richmond, Virginia), etc. In all of these cases, the hash tag is being used to categorize your tweet for a larger audience than is necessarily following you. In some ways, it’s like voluntarily joining a Twitter list.

2) You are using the hash tag for comedy, sarcasm, irony or some other form of commentary. The best example of a commentary might be the ubiquitous hash tag #justsayin or maybe #andscene (though at the time of writing the latter is pretty damn lame). Another example might be the #beerfilms hash tag that craft beer Twitterers has so much fun with a while back.

The following are silly uses of hashtags:

1) Hash tags that reference your Twitter handle.

Why? Because your twitter handle is already there. You’re already getting those tweets. The hash tag is doing nothing but taking up space and reducing the amount of space for your actual message. The best example I have of this (sorry for calling you out, Lee, it’s just the example that jumps to mind) is #tellhoptopia.

You see, almost every tweet that the hashtag #tellhoptopia is referenced in is directed at @Hoptopia or is a Re-Tweet of @Hoptopia’s original #tellhoptopia tweet. The hash tag, in this case, is entirely useless. If you want to tell @Hoptopia something, your best bet is to just tell @Hoptopia and leave the hash tag out of it because it’s not actually adding any value to the tweet or getting the information to @Hoptopia any differently.

2) Hash tags that are very broad dictionary words.

The hash tag #beer comes to mind. It’s kind of a silly hash tag. For one thing, #beer is used by a shit-ton of people for completely random reasons (and inconsistently), so it doesn’t really work as a reference marker for anything, but you can also just search for beer, and get a lot more (just as random) results.

3) Hash tags that aren’t common.

This is a little unfair of me to say. At some point, each hash tag was used for the first time. Still, just throwing random hash tags on the end of your Twitter posts is a great way to increase clutter and obscure your message. If the hash tags you use are not referring to something that is going to be repeated (ie – if the only tweet that a search for that hash tag will come up with is your own) and the hash tag itself isn’t compelling enough to be adopted by others (and thus create a new search stream), you’re just wasting time and characters while making your tweet that much harder to read quickly.

In summary, I’d say think about it this way:

Hash tags are category markings used to make searches more efficient.

Use them to categorize conferences, geographical locations, groups of people, etc.

Use them for comedy or commentary.

Otherwise, you’re just wasting the most finite resource you have on Twitter: any single one of your 140 characters.

A little while back, I ran across a fascinating article over on Ad Age.

What first drew my attention was, unsurprisingly, the beer. Colorado Native is made by AC Golden Brewing Company, a small 30 bbl subsidiary of MillerCoors. Much like Blue Moon, they are relying on “craft”-style marketing: word of mouth/viral marketing. Part of me really likes the idea of Colorado Native – it is made with almost 100% Colorado ingredients. I mean, we’re talking barley, hops, water, packaging, and even the social marketing they’re using on each bottle.

And that’s what kept my eye on this article. Social Marketing? What what? The article kind of blows through the Snap Tag reference, which is a little crazy considering it’s Ad Age magazine and not a beer-related media. I, on the other hand, was fascinated, so I did a little reading because this is something that I think that craft brewers can learn from.

MillerCoors/AC Golden is using this interesting new type of barcode technology called a Snap Tag. Snap Tags are, for all intents and purposes, pretty barcodes. Here’s an example, from SpyderLynk‘s website.

See the dots in the circle? That’s what defines the code. I’m not exactly sure, but my guess is that the location of the dots in the circle, probably in degrees based on the orientation of the logo, can denote specific information. I speculate that they’re probably a numerical format that can be translated further by an algorithm held at SpyderLynk. Since the particular product we’re talking about is Colorado Native, it’s probably a small code that changes per batch of beer manufactured so that you can track exactly which batch this came out of, who it was distributed by and, very likely (if you have that kind of tracking technology – and why wouldn’t MillerCoors?), what retailer it was bought from.

“Okay,” I can year you saying, “What’s the big deal? People put tracking codes on their products all the time. It’s really helpful for figuring out defects in batches, it helps with customer support, etc., etc.”

Yeah, I totally agree. But what you have here isn’t just a tracking program, it’s a program in which consumers are encouraged to interact with you. The amount of information you’re getting off the Snap Tag and the bottle is small. The information you’re getting from the consumer is enormous. It starts with their phone number and/or e-mail address and then, when you send something back, it continues with their birth date (you have to verify age, right?) and then continues further on with a nice questionnaire asking about their lifestyle preferences, etc. Okay, are you on Facebook? Twitter? Yeah? Awesome. Hi! You are my target market, for you have bought my product. Now I know pretty much everything about you and you have given it to my freely.

It’s a ridiculously good use of modern technology and I’m a little shocked that I don’t see any craft breweries going in this direction.

Snap Tags? No. I’m still not convinced of the merit of Snap Tags, themselves. Each of the case studies that SpyderLynk has listed on their website doesn’t actually use the information listed on the snap tag so much as it uses the Snap Tag to get people to willingly send in their contact information to a company — which is, as far as I’m concerned, the magic.

Allow me to introduce you to something called a QR Code. It’s a bar code many people (those with Androids, maybe even with iPhones, now, I’m not sure) can actually read them with their cell phones, and I’m sure that as time goes on this will become more prevalent. Here’s an example of a QR Code:

Now here’s your Snap Tag replacement, with apologies to SpyderLynk for stealing their format:

Yeah, that’s right. Take a picture of that and send it to me and I’ll get back to you and find out about you, the consumer of said QR code. In many ways the QR code itself is completely inconsequential. In this case, however, not only am I getting information from the consumer, I am also giving information back to the consumer. You can do anything with this – contests, event information, business card info, whatever. And you can make your own QR Code for free. But it doesn’t matter! The code isn’t important! The customer contact is.

Craft breweries, it’s not often that I will tell you to take a an idea from the macros, but… take this one. The most valuable marketing tool you have is a personal relationship between your business and your customer. Take this idea! Use your packaging to do more than just signify what’s inside, it is your easiest customer contact – use it! Take this awesome idea and run with it!

This column isn’t really beer related so much as it’s a long ramble of thoughts in preparation for a panel presentation at the upcoming Craft Brewers Conference. If you’re heading there, come see Storytelling 2.0: Social Media as a Conversation on Saturday morning where I’ll probably spend almost a whole minute talking about the contents of this column.

The reason that I’m focusing on Twitter and Facebook is that they are the two most ubiquitous forms of social media. Are there others? Yes. There are many others. It’s quite possible that one of them will turn out to be the Next Big Thing. It’s even more possible that the Facebook-killer is sitting as an unrealized dream in somebody’s head, waiting for VC and a team of developers. Let’s worry about the now.

Right now, Facebook and Twitter are kings of social media space. Very recently, Facebook logged more visitors than Google in a weekly metric for the first time. The media will write all kinds of grand, sweeping assumptions about what this means for internet usage, advertising markets, etc., etc. What it means to you and me is that a freakin’ lot of people are looking at Facebook. Twitter doesn’t see nearly that much traffic, but it’s equally as important. You just have to understand how it’s being used.

Social media is a unique medium. It is one in which you can’t necessarily target your audience, your audience targets you. That might not seem quite right up front if you think about traditional forms of media and advertising (television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and on and on) because you’re not in control of who is consuming your ad, right? Sure. Okay. But in all of those cases, the people who are selling advertising have a really good idea of the type of market demographic they’re reaching. They know their audience(s) and will tell you all about it. Television and radio change their advertising based on time of day because they have a good idea of who is watching or listening when. There’s a reason why sugary cereal commercials play on Saturday mornings and laxative commercials play during golf tournaments.

With Twitter and Facebook, you can only do blanket targeting a la, “I know that my target audience is beer-drinkers.” Certainly, using ads on Facebook you can target specific demographics quite effectively, but when it comes to someone “becoming a fan” of your business and consuming your day-to-day content, it is identical to Twitter where you have no control over who decides to actually follow you. It’s possible that down the road longitudinal data will be collected and statistics will be able to show you that, “Traditionally, 25 – 45 year old males use Facebook between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM,” but that doesn’t currently exist. Or if it does, I’m not sure I’d trust it to be reliable, yet. There are broad sweeping rules that seem obvious: If you want clickthroughs, post to Facebook on the weekend… y’know.. when people aren’t at work.

In reality, I think that knowing your social media audience is about knowing their consumption habits.

Here’s my theory on Facebook v. Twitter. I have no scientific data to back me up. I have conducted no studies. I am just a big nerd that likes listening to himself type.

I think of social media as being made up of 3 types of usage. These usage types overlap with each other, so it’s a pretty classic Venn diagram.

Obvious: Creators create content, repeaters aggregate and disseminate content, consumers consume it.

For the most part, every user is built of all three of these. However, the extent to which they do any given one of these vs. the others will vary greatly. 90% of content on Twitter is created by 10% of the users. Think about that for a minute. It’s not that those other 90% aren’t there (okay.. some of them aren’t there), they’re there. They’re consuming.

You, as a brewery, as a business, are a Creator. It is important that you are also a Consumer, or you will come off as a Douchebag, which is not good for business. It is also important that you spend time being a Repeater, because Repeaters create community and community is what you want, but your primary role is a Creator. Your task is to get information to the Consumers, and you will largely do it through the Repeaters. Many Consumers will find you directly, but chances are they will do so via a Repeater. So why is it important that you Consume and Repeat as well as Create?

Because social media is a conversation.

I mean, it’s “social” media for crissakes. Like any good conversation, it’s about give and take and balance. When you show that you are willing to interact with others, others will feel like you’re a valuable conversation partner and will disseminate your content as well. It’s about relationships – just like sales.

If you are only a Creator – if you use Twitter and Facebook as a press release machine – people will stop following you pretty quickly because you have no added value. You need to engage with people to be successful in this medium. You can’t just put stuff out there like it’s a billboard. It won’t work. However! It is essentially the largest, free-est billboard you have available to you.

Let me get back on topic: The difference between Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook, regardless of what their founders may have envisioned or would like it to be, is built (maybe even a little ironically) around privacy. That is probably the largest source of their success. It allows people to have an environment where they can be both social and more-or-less safe and private. People that are posting pictures of their babies and families don’t necessarily want that information to be repeated and shared to total strangers.

Twitter has no filter. Everything that is created goes out to everyone. People that use Twitter a lot revel in that. They are attention seekers.

Note: You can protect your tweets – lock them from people seeing them without your permission – but there is anecdotal evidence that shows that when you protect your tweets you essentially cut yourself off from viral community growth, which is the strength of Twitter. People won’t ask to follow you if they don’t personally know you.

In other words, Twitter is an extrovert tool and Facebook is an introvert tool. It’s a gross generalization, but it works.

Here’s a guess: I would bet that most Twitter users have a Facebook account but that most Facebook users do not have a Twitter account. Twitter users will talk to anyone and everyone, Facebook users only really talk to their friends.

While there’s a fair amount of content crossover between Twitter and Facebook, you have to use these tools differently.

When you post something on Facebook that people like, they will “Like” it to give you feedback that you’ve done something, or said something right. Some people may comment on it. For the most part, it’s only going out to the people that are following you as fans. These people are enthusiastic for your product, since they have chosen to receive updates from a business in the midst of their private and personal space. That is even more reason to not treat it as a press release machine. Remember: You don’t have to convince these people. They already know who you are and what you do. They’re already fans and customers. They’re following you because they’ve bought into your vision and they want to engage with you and interact.

When you post something on Twitter that people like, they will Re-Tweet it. Those people may not be following you because they’re existing customers. Twitterers are just as likely to follow you because you look interesting, you seem interesting, or you’ve Tweeted something once that they were intrigued by. They are also just as likely to stop following you because you’re boring or you’re annoying. They are the social butterflies of the internet.

When you post to Facebook, it’s your job to make announcements to your customers and start conversations. Ask leading questions. Get feedback. Invite people to events. Post photo albums. Most importantly: Consider that the information on your Fan Page takes a much longer time to move than it does on your user’s “Recent Posts” listing and that they can and will use your page as a time line to go back and read over recent, and even not-so-recent posts. Facebook is much more of an on-going time line that people will scroll back through to see what’s happened. Because they generally are only friends with people they know in Real Life, they’re likely to be following far fewer people than your average Twitterer. You can over-post.

When you post to Twitter, it’s your job to be a fun and interesting conversationalist. Ask leading questions, but also answer them. Create relationships, because those with whom you have good relationships will be your biggest fans. Post photos, but use them as part of your daily story line. Don’t assume that they’ll necessarily stay around for people to see later, because most people won’t bother finding them. Twitter is like a snapshot of life. Because of that, it might seem like a smart idea to repeat the same information over and over again so that others who aren’t looking at the snapshot when you post will see it, but by doing that you’ll antagonize the frequent watchers – and those are the big Repeaters.

On both sites, trust that information will disseminate. It’ll happen. These sites are the very definition of viral marketing. If you have something valuable, it will spread. Like any good conversation, people will revisit a topic later, especially one that they’ve enjoyed. Let them do it. The challenge is to create something valuable and to keep that conversation going.