The Future Buzz | Media, Marketing, PR

The other week I analyzed the Business Week social media article. It rubbed me the wrong way for several reasons, however John Sviokla who writes for Harvard Business Review left a comment that well-summarized my main motivation to dissect it:

It’s been a busy few months, so I wanted to circle back and share the latest content I’ve published at Online Marketing Blog with The Future Buzz community. Follow the links below for my 10 latest articles published there. If you enjoy what you’re reading here, you’ll also find these useful:

Something strange has happened. It’s more than just your marketing being dated, although that happened too. There is a deeper shift that has occurred and few have caught up with it.

It’s that marketing itself was disrupted. We need something else. And what’s next is going to look more sociology-driven than something taken from a marketing best practices book.

In epistemology, the theory of knowledge, the prefix meta is used to describe about (its own category). For example, a metablogger would be a blogger who writes about blogging.

As someone who spends a great deal of time as contributor, participant and observer of a pretty diverse array of web communities, I find the meta aspect fascinating. What I mean by this is without fail, every community enjoys having discussions about itself. It’s something not usually stated directly within the communities, but it’s a reality.

I’m a big fan of psychologist and author Robert Greene. Previously, I deconstructed his landmark book, the 48 laws of power, and interpreted how the laws apply to blogging.

It was a pleasant surprise for me to discover he has written two other books outlining laws applicable to the areas of seduction and war. War strategy is especially compelling because businesses take cues from military strategic successes in areas such as how they react to changes in the marketplace from competition and how they position their external communications.

Recently, I have been studying neuro-linguistic programming to gleam insights for marketing strategy and satisfy my own curiosity on the subject. I thought it would be interesting to share a brief introduction of it with you today without getting too complex. The articles around the web and books about this are lengthy and use a ton of technical jargon, so I’ll try to share just the useful bits of information on the subject in plain English so you’re aware of the concept.

Definition of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)

Neuro-linguistic programming is defined as a model of interpersonal communication concerned with the relationship between patterns of behavior and the subjective experiences behind them. There is a system of therapy based on this which educates people in self-awareness and effective communication, and then seeks to change their patterns of mental and emotional behavior.

Let me preface this by stating that I really do like Chris Brogan – I link to him frequently, share his posts across social media, and am a fan of what he does. But, if the blogosphere is great at one thing – it is bringing all sides to something, which I’d like to spend a minute doing.

Chris wrote a post yesterday titled: Spread Your Wings- Get More Retweet Action Today. I’m not sure why this rubbed me the wrong way, maybe it is because I think it is a better strategy to make good content that isn’t tailored to a specific platform than try and design something for one network.

After reading through his post/comments and thinking about how much has been written on Twitter-specific strategies as of late, I have a few points I’d like to remind everyone:

After more than 12 years of socializing on the web I have come to a simple conclusion: it’s not about technology or being able to manipulate tools “better” than anyone else, rather – it’s about ideas. The technical aspects are totally democratized, and becoming simpler to implement every day. Internet marketing isn’t directly about technology, rather it’s about ideas that set it on fire.

It’s about ideas that spread, ideas that are sticky, ideas that connect us in meaningful ways – with each other, with businesses, with causes. Whether that idea is simple or complex technically is not relevant, and in fact some of the most successful examples are ridiculously simple. With that said – even to be able to come up with simple ideas you have to be fluent in how society connects and communicates and have a comprehension of all the tools available today and tomorrow.

There’s an interesting article over at The Liberal discussing the future of economic models involving free. It’s a good read, and presents some viewpoints which run counter to what Chris Anderson has been writing lately. Despite the fact that I’m inclined to have common ground with Chris, (especially as an artist who embraces the concept of free) I enjoy reading and interpreting all viewpoints.

There’s one graph in the article that struck me, and it’s actually the one part which has nothing to do with free economic models, rather, it is on the cultural implications of technology:

It is an enigma of all technologies that we only come to understand their latent cultural function once they are no longer necessary. With the dawn of television, we came to recognize that cinema was not just about moving pictures, but an opportunity to have a night out in public. With the dawn of email, we now see that letter-writing is not just about conveying information, but a way of demonstrating greater affection or respect for the recipient.

I experiment with many different ideas to create interesting content, drive traffic, earn links, rally communities and inspire people to action. It’s a lot of fun, and at the same time a fantastic way to learn. There is no limit to using open networks other than your creativity. And, quite possibly the best way to learn and find what works for you personally is by experimenting.