Highway to Hale

Photo by "eschipul" via Flickr

If you’ve read Chris Brogan and Julien Smith‘s Trust Agents, you’re familiar with changing the game to succeed. Game changers are people that don’t just outperform their competition, they bring something to the table that transforms the industry or spawns a whole new industry. Maybe you’re like HubSpot, and have the ability to create an industry based on inbound marketing.

Before you can change your game, you need to know exactly what your game is. If you’re a sports fan, I have no doubt that you know Colin Cowherd. Cowherd always takes shots at people that think they can be sports radio personalities. It’s not negative, he just hits people with a dose of reality. The reality is that you don’t know his game. You might know a TON about sports or get everything right about your team, but that’s not Cowherd’s job. Like all radio personalities, Cowherd doesn’t get paid to be right about sports. He gets paid to entertain you. He admits that when he’s wrong, his ratings are noticeably higher.

To a listener, it sounds like Cowherd has a job because he knows sports (and there is a level of knowledge required…but that can be learned if you’re interested). You can’t compete with Colin Cowherd until you realize the arena in which you are competing – you’re not competing in sports, you’re competing in entertainment. If you take the entertainment too far, you’re not valuable to the sports community and if you take the sports too far, you’re too boring.

Another example in sports is Dwight Freeney. When asked about his game plan with an injured ankle in the Super Bowl, Freeney told reporters that he planned to find the ball and tackle the guy holding it. It sounds simple, but think about how many football players place emphasis on beating the guy in front of them. Freeney mentioned that he doesn’t get paid to beat his man or tire out an offensive lineman, he gets paid to put the man with the ball on the turf. He understands his game. He is past the obstacle directly in front of him when he starts (mentally), and he can focus on the true goal.

Do you recognize your game? Do you understand the reasoning behind your methods? It helps if you focus on problem-oriented problem solving. Yes, solutions are good, but if you think about solutions, you often miss the core of the problem. For example – if you’re living space is too dark, the solution might be to get more lights (one logical route). Consider this though: the problem is not that you don’t have enough lighting fixtures (lighting fixtures are ONE solution), the problem is lack of light. The problem opens new paths other than going out to buy new lighting fixtures. Have any ideas?

By Beck Tench (10ch)

At what age did you start drawing stick people? Drawing your first stick person is kind of like the opposite of the first time you stood up to walk. Rather than progress from rolling to sliding to crawling to walking, you regress from drawing (or attempting to draw) the way you see things to drawing stereotyped figures to drawing stick people.

Most psychologists agree that we draw stick figures because we lose confidence in our artistic ability at some age. Ok, no big deal. We’re not all artists. But notice – we don’t choose to draw stick people because we can’t draw…we do it because we aren’t confident. Go ahead and try it (skip the excuses) – draw a somewhat realistic person.

The same thing happens with sharing ideas. We become less confident in our answers, ideas, and writing – so we slow down. Blogs go unwritten, comments go unspoken, and excuses fill the void. We replace thought-provoking and creative blog posts with hot topic keywords to see if you can grab some search love for your mind-numbing posts that take an angle you were positive nobody had written. Here’s a free tip: “news” didn’t become a top trending topic on the internet until people started poking and prodding from every angle.

Rather than pushing the same idea you’ve tried with every campaign, dare to drop a new idea during brainstorming. If you’ve surrounded yourself with the right people, the idea is less likely to be shot down than it is to be transformed into a campaign worth talking about.

Stick figures don’t get any attention. Anybody can draw a stick figure. Your individual style is more intriguing. I’m not asking you to study realism and draw an anatomically correct human each time you try, I’m just asking you to expose your creativity. I’m not asking you to blow the world away with your innovative blog, I’m just asking you to write about different topics. I’m not asking you to have the best idea each time you brainstorm, I’m just asking you give everybody around you a chance to build something great.

This post is a result of my asking you to name my next blog post. I only had a few suggestions and I appreciate each one, but this title comes as a suggestion from Jonathan Miller (@JonFun). Thank you all.

We’ve all had those moments where ideas and words just dry up in an instant. Contributing factors combine to act as a sponge for creativity and our fingers cease up. None of our ideas seem to be that important and none of the words we use to express our ideas are quite right. So we stop. That’s ok – if you don’t have anything to write/say, take some time to gather your thoughts.

First, don’t worry about it. It happens to everybody. That’s often where the strange posts on your favorite blogs come from. Sometimes the strange idea becomes a regular feature, sometimes it goes into the “filler” bin.

Don’t be afraid to let your ideas build up in a mental reservoir without writing anything. Chances are the build up won’t take long before the dam breaks and your ideas are begging to get out into the world. When that dam breaks, grab a laptop, some headphones and some coffee (if that’s what you’re in to). Sit down and blast out as many posts as your carpal tunnel will allow. Once you’ve got a cache of solid content – refine and relate to timely examples when you are ready to publish.

Don’t look for ideas while you write, let the ideas find you. If you’ve done your searching and thinking before you write, you’ll have a harder time stopping than getting started.

If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right.

This post comes as a response to a recent article called “Why Resumes Are Lame” by Ryan Stephens. Ryan makes the argument that resumes are a waste of time, especially in certain fields including PR, marketing, social media, and advertising. David Spinks also wrote a post on “3 Reasons Why Resumes SHOULD Be Irrelevant” awhile back.

Here’s an important first note: Don’t throw away your resume. In fact, make your resume awesome with tangible results, relevant job experience, and a few personal interests. While you’re at it, see if you can present that information in a creatively designed manner. The chance you will get any job without a resume is pretty close to 0.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, forget what you’ve been told about a resume. There are only so many ways black ink on a white piece of paper can really speak to the validity of your skill and stick in a hiring manager’s mind.

All I’m trying to add to the discussion is that young people should be using all of the tools at their disposal to get creative and stand in the face of a bad economy to get that dream job they’ve been preparing for. Even the simple things help you stand out. Write a blog. It shows your ability to write coherently and present important ideas in your industry.

Will a blog replace your resume? Absolutely not. But it will create a conversation and build your personal brand.

Consider how designers apply for a job: They often drop off a well-designed promo/teaser piece for their artwork. Then, they follow up with examples of their previous artwork (portfoli0) and support their abilities in text by presenting a creatively designed resume. Why wouldn’t you do something similar for a job in your field? No, it’s not the norm. But unexpected creativity focuses eyeballs. If nobody sees you, nobody can hire you.

For example: You’ve built your personal brand in social media, so run a campaign for your brand to get hired. Call on your community and use the tools and theories you’ve learned, practiced, and discovered to promote yourself.

It all comes back to the age old Journalism saying – Show. Don’t tell.

Allow your creativity and the available tools to open doors. So what are you going to use as your doorstop? A flimsy piece or paper with twisted words, or your confident skills filled with substance and experience?

*for further examples, Ryan Stephens added these two examples to his blog. They are great uses of available tools to build a campaign for an individual to get hired. There’s also one example I added that shows how people are marketing themselves in other industries as well

• Here’s one.
• Here’s another.
• It’s not just a social media thing.

Why is social media so scary for traditional marketers? Because social media acknowledges that consumers are getting smarter. Smarter consumers means that marketers have to get smarter. Not a comfortable thought for the people who are currently considered marketing pros.

It is no longer enough to get your product in the right place for the right price with the right promotion. Of course those things all help (a lot), but social media gives the ability to join the right conversation. Consumers have been doing their best to avoid marketing messages for quite some time now, but the goal of social media is to provide a forum in which consumers want to engage. It doesn’t take a leap of faith to agree that engaging consumers is more beneficial than shoving a message in the face of an unwilling listener.

Another scary aspect of social media is that it often includes a waiting game. Consumers do not want their lives (conversations) intruded upon, but they do welcome answers when they pose a question. Prior to even pitching a social media plan, you have to listen to, analyze, and track conversations about the product. After you’ve listened, you better become the expert, because you need to jump head first into the communities that discuss your products. By “jump head first” I do not mean START SELLING! I mean be a member of the community. Add value, answer questions, be transparent.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of social media for traditional marketers to grasp is the idea that (before engaging) they must ask whether they are contributing to the conversation or selling. Selling is going to lead to avoidance, contributing value will lead to engagement. Transparency is one of the keys here. People will talk about your brand (both positively and negatively) whether you are there to hear it and engage in it or not.

The difficulty that comes with engaging customers is what draws me to social media. It’s an art of sorts. If traditional marketing is a blacksmith (forcing metal into unnatural, yet strong, forms), then social media marketing is glass blowing (strategically forming glass into an organic form with intelligent persuasion). Like blown glass, no two social media plans are exactly the same.

Agree? Disagree? Like to add? Looking forward to your comments.