Online, where you can't buy attention as easily as you can with traditional advertising, most commercial media has the imperative of interestingness built in. The assignment is to make it viral, make it something people will watch or click on or even better, share.
This is hard for mass marketers, marketers who are used to making average stuff for average people and promoting heavily in media where they can buy guaranteed attention. And so, we see organizations buying likes and pageviews, pushing for popovers and popunders and all sorts of new ways to interrupt online.
Smart advertisers, though, are realizing that they have to make content that people decide is worth watching. Some have become very good indeed at making media that's so entertaining that we not only want to watch it, but spread it.
The challenge is that all those hoops you need to jump through to attract attention might be precisely the opposite of what you need to do to cause action, to get someone to change her mind or to connect.
A squadron of singing ferrets might make your video spread, but that approach isn't going to cause the action you seek.
And, alas, you have to do both.
January 3, 2013
Hey, even the headline is a bummer. The first thing that they teach you at business book/blogging school is that "fun and easy" are the two magic words, followed, I guess, by "dummies." Difficult and frightening are not part of the syllabus.
Alas, the work we're being asked to do now, the emotional labor we're getting paid to do, is frightening. It's frightening to stand up for what we believe in, frightening to do something that might not work, frightening to do something that we have to be responsible for.
Tonight is the first ever Icarus Session, a worldwide event that might just be happening near you (click here to find the local event, and here to find out what it's all about). There are more than 360 communities signed up so far, with thousands of people around the world getting together in small groups to speak up and to support each other.
Two things might hold someone back from sharing the art they've got inside: The fear of telling the truth or the lame strategy of hiding the truth behind a sales pitch.
If you can, find a way to come to a session near you tonight. And if you can find the voice, stand up and tell people what you care about.
Your art is vitally important, and what makes it art is that it is personal, important and fraught with the whiff of failure. This is precisely why it's scarce and thus valuable—it's difficult to stand up and own it and say, "here, I made this." For me, anyway, writing a book is far easier than handing it to someone I care about and asking them to read it.
Throughout the USA, there are bookstores (Barnes and Noble as a notable example) hosting piles of my new book, The Icarus Deception.
Here's something you might do today: Go to this site, scroll down and find the laid-out bookmark and print it out. Take the bookmark and write on it. Write down your project, your feelings, the thing you're making–share your art. Tell us your URL if you have one, or draw a picture if you like. And then go to the local bookstore and carefully put the bookmark in a copy of Icarus. (It's great with me if you support your local bookstore by buying something while you're there).
One day, someday, someone will buy the book and find your bookmark. A karmic connection will happen, and you'll be connected to a stranger. Your art will be in the world, and perhaps one day, this stranger, this reader, this fellow traveler will continue the chain, putting her bookmark into someone else's book.
Right now, the urgency is real. We have to create more art, create better art and build more substantial connections.
Click above for a small film about what it means to make and share your art. The last line from Sasha is worth the four minutes. My publisher's book trailer has also just gone live.
January 2, 2013
A year ago today, do you remember where you stood?
Last year about this time, I was lying on the couch, having ripped my hamstring with a loud pop while working out early in the morning. But that's not the sort of 'stand' that I'm talking about.
Are you more trusted? More skilled? More connected to people who care about your work?
How many people would miss your work if you stopped contributing it?
New Year's resolutions rarely work, because good intentions don't often survive a collision with reality. But an inventory is a helpful tool, a way to keep track of what you're building. Drip by drip.
Just be careful on your roller skis.
January 1, 2013
