Building a business one question at a time. ✎ By Wayne K. Spear
Posted in Business
Tagged Branding, Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Organizational Development
Communication breakdown is not always the same. ✎ By Wayne K. Spear
It is the hardest simple thing you will ever do.
That is why communication failure is at the root of many ills.
And, yet, in our hearts and minds we human beings believe that communication is an ordinary, ever-day act—as natural to us as breathing.
Well, what if your communication strategy has emphysema?
Think about this: homo sapiens is older than words, by many thousands of years. We evolved to communicate without a verbal language.
Emotion, gesture, posture, and facial expression trump verbal communication. We need these so much that in the age of social media we have found ways to interpolate them.
Every face is an open book.
Our communication styles vary. We each have a language of our own. Asperger syndrome is a communication style. The language of poetry is another.
Understand, and be understood. This, in a phrase, is the goal of all communication.
Relationships, marriages, and politics all depend upon effective communication.
Businesses fail when their internal and external communications are shoddy.
The work of managing internal communication is Organizational Development.
The work of managing the effective, bi-directional flow of information is Public Relations.
The work of understanding your audience’s needs and perceptions is Marketing.
Figure 1: the three modes of communication
Do you understand yourself and your communication style? Do you understand the audience? Are you a seller speaking the language of sellers, when you should be speaking the language of buyers? Do you have the right message for the wrong audience, or the wrong message for the right audience?
What does communication mean to you, and to your business?
To give is to receive. ✎ By Wayne K. Spear
CC image “Data storage—old and new” courtesy of Ian on Flickr
Do, Dare.
To the English-speaking reader, it looks like an inspirational slogan.
In Latin, it is a verb. Do, Dare, Dedi, Datus: I give, to give, I have given, I am given.
Data are things given.
We live in a world of data. As you navigate the Internet, you give. You are given.
Do, Dare, Dedi, Datus.
You give yourself away. Your Google searches, your browsing history, your conversations with friends.
User-generated content, marketing, and advertising are converging. You are the copy writer and the content marketing department and the customer.
The ads that you see on Facebook are echoes of your posts. This is called re-marketing.
Too much is given, and yet not enough. Your age, gender, location, and income. Your web history. Your click-throughs and conversions and bounces. Your likes and favorites.
Adaptive marketing seeks to tailor the browsing experience to the individual user. The problem is not lack of data, it is abundance.
The future belongs to the experts—to those who can interpret data. You are the expert on you.
That’s why you must become the snitch and the mole and the collaborator. We are all collaborators in this work of giving ourselves, and others, away.
Collaborative filtering is used by Amazon to recommend books. If you and I both enjoyed reading Y, the fact that I enjoyed reading X suggests you, too, will enjoy reading X.
Once upon a time, your personal details were gold. They were secrets surreptitiously mined. You had to be taken, without your awareness.
Then you learned to give. You became data. There was no more guessing at your inner life, drawing upon hit-and-miss clues like your age and zip code. You knew where your gold was, and you gave it away.
The future is convergence and integration and collaboration. You are the creator of the advertising script woven into your friends feed, the conductor of a private focus group, the expert. You are the giver of all that is gold.
