—— ‘To prosper soundly in business, you must satisfy not only your customers, but you must lay yourself out to satisfy also the men who make your product and the men who sell it.’ = Harry Bassett — – “We are all manufacturers – making good, making trouble or making excuses. “ = HV Adolt ===== – ‘It’s hard to know who to trust and what is real.’ = Marc Burrows ————————– Well. This morning I got absorbed in a story about a young social media entrepreneur who is now rejecting social media as ‘real.’ This is fascinating to me because while one minute she was using a social media platform to create income the next minute she is using a social media platform to create … well … I don’t know what yet <and I am not sure she does yet either … although … I will suggest if she does it well … it will also generate revenue>. But here is what hasn’t changed – she is is still an influencer or a manufacturer. Yup. In today’s world if you are involved on any social platform … well … you are a manufacturer. You manufacture opinions, information, facts <or quasi-facts> and ultimately some influence in that you have made someone think about something. For businesses … well … to prosper in today’s business you pretty much have to satisfy everyone … not just customers or employees or manufacturers … but everyone. Pretty much anyone … at least the people with a tumblr, facebook, twitter, pinterest, etc., account … can be major influencer these days. Please note that I added in the word ‘major.’ I did so because the internet has simply amplified what already existed. While in the past I could have sat at the corner of a bar pontificating <and possibly influencing> a small group of people … today I can write blog posts and pontificate without having to speak any louder <and possibly influence a larger group of people>. I don’t think that is an epiphany. Shit. I know for certain marketing companies are espousing the effectiveness of influencer marketing versus traditional tactics. This thing called ‘Influencer Marketing’ is getting discussed as an expertise more and more. Why? Beyond simple common sense … a recent McKinsey study stated that marketing inspired word-of-mouth messaging generates more than 2X the sales of paid ads, and these same customers have a 37% higher retention rate. But influencing is much more than ‘people endorsing what I have to sell & tell people’. === I wrote about this from the perspective of influencing as a new economy structure … what I called a “friends & feedback quantity architecture“ === In the past, the way you showed that you cared was through physically doing something or being actively involved. Today you can prove passion through virtual activity. And you can manufacture influence based on how well you prove this passion <through words, pictures or sheer artistic communication>. This means that as soon as you become involved on any social network you have become an unpaid advertising writer or photographer on a vast platform. But here is the tricky part. You can actually also manufacture your own demise. Yeah. Sometimes social media seems to be a social Darwinism experiment. While we all have the right to free speech — that’s what America is built on — you actually run into some free speech challenges on Twitter or Facebook or any social network. Alll you have to do is to offer one divisive/inane/innocuous/ thoughtless/indifferent remark and you pretty much can be assured you will not land your dream job, maybe find yourself losing that college acceptance … or find yourself fired … or find out that you are now manufacturing hate <against you> versus manufacturing progress. It is kind of crazy that one small voice can wreak such havoc in one’s life. It seems almost counterintuitive that in a world where people have so many diversions, demands and distractions where it’s getting harder and harder to “capture people’s attention” the web can amplify one person’s voice to a point that our attention is still captured. Influencing, or being an influencer, actually moves beyond simple attention … it incorporates some feeling of connection, or disconnection, to be truly effective. At the end of the day, people will forget what you said, forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. The fundamentals of marketing, and, frankly, influencing remains the same. If you have an insight you can … well … influence ‘the swarm.’ Technology has enabled amplification. === Google computer scientist in India: … while some of our projects improved lives, most had little long-term impact. When I looked back at our 40-odd projects, what I saw was that it wasn’t the technology that decided whether the outcomes were good or bad, it was us and our partners. When we were committed and worked with capable partners, our technology augmented their impact. But when we had corrupt or inept collaborators, the technology aggravated the dysfunction. In other words, technology doesn’t add a fixed benefit. Instead, it amplifies underlying human forces. Amplification is a simple idea, but it’s powerful. === Let me spend a minute on this swarm thing because influencing is all about motivating, or inspiring, swarm like behavior. In the animal world, a swarm <think a school of fish>, is a well-coordinated group that moves in sync and can change direction abruptly and uniformly. Signals for how to behave are rapidly communicated among swarm members. Remarkably, they do this without a leader. They act “independently as one.” [...]
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