Early on in my web geek history, I used to hear the phrase “it’s just a platform” dispensed frequently, especially when someone would ask: “What’s this thing good for, anyway?” I was always frustrated by that kind of non-answer answer. After all, if you’re building some cool new tool, community or virtual world, you would think you would have an answer to the “What do I do with this” question, which is really just asking “Why have you gone and built this thing? What do you plan to use it for?”
The web started out as a way for academics to share information. They built the web as a “platform” for these conversations. I don’t think they could have forseen what it has become over time, because it has evolved, as the needs of people using it have changed over time, with each new tool or site or use adding additional knowledge and information in its wake. Sure, the idea of a platform, like a blank canvas, that changes as the needs and creativity of the users changes, is amazing. I’d argue that with that logic, we can look at democracy and capitalism as “just a platform”, but clearly they were created with some sort of intent behind them.
Platforms, like Facebook or Twitter, have clearly evolved over time. Like the code that runs the web itself, its changed enough that its original form seems barely recognizable, like an old farm house that kept having rooms added on to it until barely anything of the first structure exists. Sometimes the way the initial foundation is constructed reflects what tools were in use and available at that time, leaving us with archaic pieces glommed on to less efficient pieces of code (cough- Windows- cough). The question then becomes whether or not to abandon the old to make way for a whole new platform, like the Mac did with its OS based on Unix, or to keep modifying the old, and hope the rickety building sticks together. The legacy of the old foundation and initial purpose still flows through the veins of the platform, however.
The creators of platforms, ranging from web communities or even the iPod and iPad, may be surprised, and even thrilled at what people have been able to do with their creations, enjoying how these “children” have grown up over time, changed, evolved, and even exceeded the parent’s wildest dreams at the moment of conception. I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg has probably had a cringe moment or two when his Mom or old girlfriend contacted him on Facebook, but has also been thrilled that people see him as a visionary and having created something 500 Million people engage in- exceeding the population of the US.
Sometimes its difficult to see what to do with blank canvases. Sometimes its hard to explain to others “What is it good for? Why do I need to use it?” But if you ever want someone to engage, to have the platform grow and evolve, you had better be able to answer, even in a simple way, why someone would possibly want to be there, and what the attraction is. If you can’t bait the hook, you can’t catch the fish, or in business, make the sale.
So, my dear geekarati friends, please have patience with the lay folk and come up with a better and more compelling sales pitch than “it’s just a platform.” That tends to be what we refer to as content-free speech- words are being said, but the meaning is obscure.
Tags: marketing, platform, sales
One of my favorite concepts from all of those years studying biology was the concept of the niche. An organism or creature finds a spot where the competition isn’t too intense, and raw materials they can work with, and decides to set up shop. They work with their environment and find a place where they can be successful, or they die out. Sometimes the environment around them changes, and the creature needs to adapt or perish.
The same thing is true for businesses, economics, families,you name it- as it’s true for bacteria or lemurs. If you find a niche and can exploit it to your advantage, you have a strategy for success that will carry you far. That is essentially the whole basis for great books like “Blue Ocean Strategy” (Amazon Link) that talk about finding markets where the competition isn’t fierce, or just isn’t there yet- you have the ability to own the niche.
One way businesses achieve this is by creating their own ecosystems. Apple is brilliant at this, with iTunes and the App Store- it has created a whole economy that it owns. It lets others play in the sandbox, helping diversify the entire ecosystem, making it more robust, and letting others compete to fill in the niches of best song, or best movie or best work productivity App, all the while taking a percentage, like an agent, as owner of the ecosystem or world. Amazon has done this, as has Ebay. All of these ecosystems compete at points of overlap- like a town encroaching on an animal’s habitat- but for large swaths of the ecosystem, there is less competition and life goes on pretty happily.
Finding your niche is difficult for a lot of folks, in part, because it starts with the very hard question of who YOU are, what you do best, and what you love to do. Sometimes, we can fill a niche because we are perfectly suited for a job that’s available, but if it doesn’t make you thrilled or excited to go to work every day, how are you really going to have the heart required to maximize the opportunity day after day?
Another spot of friction is when you know your talents and strengths, how do you communicate those to others is a short, coherent, easy to grasp way so they can help you find a niche that works? Some people refer to this as a lobby or elevator pitch- what is your tag line that inspires other people to be interested in you and hire you?
For example, on Twitter, I am largely known as LD Podcast, for the podcast I’ve done about learning and learning disabilities. But the important part there is really the Learning part- that transcends people struggling in school or work with things like dyslexia and ADHD. I feel I’m all about learning and teaching, and trying to find the most effective ways to make your message clear. I read business books and marketing books because these fields are all about making messages clear in order to get someone to buy something. I take all these ideas and concepts and apply them to help businesses, medical education, and other clients/niche owners to make their ideas and talents more easily understood. When you understand, quickly, what someone or some business is about, you can quickly decide whether you need that service, and you can convey that information easily to others- making the idea a virus, as Seth Godin would say. The principals are the same whether we’re talking math facts for middle school kids or marketing plans for adults or social media tools- you’ve got to be able to make a case and sell your ideas for anyone else to understand them and do anything with them. And that, in a nutshell, is about good, precise communication.
Which brings us back to science. In science and technical writing, precision is really important. I’ve spent hours struggling over a sentence or two in an abstract, trying to get the exact language as concise and accurate as possible. Likewise, in law school, your ability to win a case or argument depends on how you use language to communicate your client’s position to another, and use supporting information to convince the decision maker you are correct. In business and marketing, you have to do the same thing- use language to convince someone your product or service solves a need or problem- maybe even one they didn’t know they had. (Just ask Ron Popiel, or read about him in Malcolm Gladwell’s “What The Dog Saw“.)
In the end, it’s all about finding your unique niche where you can thrive. You need enough resources (which includes money and customers for business, often money and students for education) to make the most of the niche, and you have to be constantly willing to adapt and change with the environment. If you can’t adapt and evolve, you will likely suffer, decline, and possible even go extinct, or at least out of business.
It’s easier said than done of course. But the process starts and ends with you, not with the shiny new objects or social media tools or anything else. I’d love to be able to say Get Twitter and life will be perfect, but that’s not true. Like monkeys figuring out to poke a stick in a log to get food, it’s all about how you use that tool to its greatest effect that will bring you success, and it often involves experimentation, failure, and reinvention time after time.
I know my life is one great experiment. I think I know something, and that knowledge gets challenged. I can stick to my guns, or adapt to the new conditions. I have to apply what I know. In reading The Checklist Manifesto- How to get Things Right, they talk about two distinct kinds of mistakes we make all the time. There are errors we make of ignorance- we don’t know what we don’t know- and then there are egregious errors- when we know the right thing to do, but we just can’t seem to execute as we’re supposed to, leading to disaster.
For example, I know easily 20 different diet plan that promise to help me lose weight, but it’s not a lack of knowledge, it’s the consistent implementation over time that causes trip-ups. Part of it is programming the environment, and making doing the right thing easier than doing the self-destructive or ignorant or convenient thing. Part of it is keeping simple rules forefront in your mind, and avoiding the infinite shades of gray.
Success will be measured by how well you can adapt to the “rules” or metrics of your environment, or control the environment to your advantage. It’s how well you can fill your social, cultural or economic niche.
And that’s why studying biology and evolution is essential to everyone. Period. Know your niche and optimize it.
Tags: biological basis of business, business, education, finding your niche, ideas, malcolm gladwell, marketing, niche, seth godin, what the dog saw
Posted by Whitney on Feb 5, 2010 in
Uncategorized I have been a fan of Seth Godin’s for a long time. I read his blogs, buy his books, and frequently recommend them to friends. (In fact, we celebrated my birthday this year at Max Brenner’s restaurant, in part due to reading about Max in Seth’s books.) So when Seth told readers on his blog that they could get an early copy of his book by making a donation to the Acumen Fund, I eagerly signed up.
I really enjoyed Linchpin, and you can see my earlier reviews here. I would love to sit down with Seth and discuss his Lizard Brain concept further, taking into account the development of the brain as we go from kids to adults and how that process may impact creativity. But despite any nitpicking I might do on neurology, it brought home the point that you have the best chance to succeed when you are involved and engaged in your work.
When I came home today from a client meeting where being engaged and responsive had made a big impact, I was surprised to see a package by my door. Inside was another copy of Linchpin with a note from Seth that read :
“Generosity is a key piece of being an artist. It gives each of us a chance to connect, to make a difference and to do indispensable work. You were generous enough to make a donation to the Acumen Fund, an organization that focuses on trade, not aid, building communities that work because each member contributes more than they get. A few weeks ago, I sent you a preview copy of Linchpin, as promised. Now, in recognition of your generosity, I’m giving you another. I hope you’ll share this one with someone you care about.”
What a lovely surprise! I’m speaking to a group next week, and I’m going to make sure someone in the audience gets this gift, along with the hope they will pay it forward as well in the future.
I know Seth is a fantastic marketer, and this is an additional chance to help the word spread about his book. Since I found myself quoting the book frequently after reading it, I’m doing a pretty good job of that already. But this gives me an additional chance to share Seth’s words with others, and it was a terrific and thoughtful gift to find on my doorstep. It was like finding a handwritten note, that chocolate on the pillowcase, the extra secret surprise than reinforces the concept of getting through the process of giving.
I know I always find the more I give and help others, the more I seem to get in return. The return comes in many forms, but whether it’s volunteering or taking a moment to help a friend, or doing great work with a client, I always seem to end up
feeling that everything I put into a project, I get at least that much, if not more, out on the other side. Even in cases where things don’t work out so well, I always find there’s often a lesson I needed to learn in the process.
The bottom line here is that I’m already a huge Seth fan. He doesn’t need to “re-sell” me, really. I’m already happily playing on his team, so to speak. But this gesture reinforces the message that Seth not only stands behind his work, but he wants to make it easy to share with others who may not be fans (yet) the same way I am. And it’s another lesson to me that these small moments of surprise can be touching- moments of delight that work on many levels, including encouraging me to invest in any of Seth’s future projects. Not because of any “What’s in it for me?” reason, but because he always seems to find a way to surprise and delight me, and I’ve always been thrilled by anything I’ve done on his recommendation. I always learn something from Seth, or am reminded of things that are important that I may have put on the back shelf. So I’ll continue to invest in Seth, because he’s never afraid on investing in his audience and fans.
Tags: acumen fund, delight, fans, linchpin, marketing, seth godin, sharing, surprise
Posted by Whitney on Apr 3, 2009 in
Uncategorized I just got an automated phone call from my grocery store. Wegman’s has long been in our family- it was the best grocery in Rochester, NY where I grew up. There’s one in Downingtown, PA now, and while it’s about a 30-40 minute drive to get there, I go and stock up on favorite items about once a month.
Wegman’s like many grocery stores, has a shopper’s club. They give you discounts, coupons, etc. like all programs. But I just got a phone call from Wegman’s informing me that their records showed I had purchased two products that are being recalled because of the pistachio nut/salmonella scare. They gave me the product name, identification dates- everything I need to see if the item is still in the pantry, and the ability to return it for a full refund.
So for all that demographic information Wegman’s is collecting about my shopping habits, they are also using this data to help long after the sale has occurred- in this case, in the event of a recall.
(I’d actually like to see my trends at shopping there compared to other stores myself, since I don’t log this information anywhere- might be interesting- but that’s another story all together.)
Talk about great PR, great use of information, and great building of a relationship and trust with customers. Not only do we care about you in getting your business, we’ll contact you if there’s anything that might cause a problem after the sale is made as well.
I already love Wegman’s, but this has made me even more of a raving fan. Does any other business care so much about you before and after the sale? Is anyone else doing this kind of work?
Thank you, Danny Wegman and the whole team, for caring about family, for taking this step to keep us all healthy, and for making sure you will always be my store of choice.
Tags: marketing, pistachios, public health, shoppers club, trust, wegmans
Posted by Whitney on Apr 3, 2009 in
Uncategorized As someone with two kids with ADHD, attention is a big deal to us. I’ve made it my job to understand how attention works, how to get it, how to focus it, and how sustain it, because this information is vital to helping my kids learn how to learn most effectively.
Turns out, this has a shiny, interesting byproduct- the shift in the advertising and the PR markets is becoming all about how to get and sustain attention. Whether you are talking about parenting, education, presentations, marketing- aspects of all of these endeavors involves, at its heart, attention.
Every human is equipped with a brain that has been customized by biology and experience over time. We now know that brains are always changing, forming new connections, pruning out old ones, even after you are an adult. People’s faces can be encoded on one neuron in your brain.* For everything you read, everything you see, everything you learn, your brain is changed by this process and customized for your needs.
Attention is the system that gets you to focus and possibly encode new information. Our brains are constantly looking for new information and running complex algorithms to determine whether that thing moving in your peripheral vision is harmless, or a danger. That’s part of our simplest flight or fight mechanism, and we can’t turn that off.
However, for people with ADHD, that system runs on high alert most times. Every new and novel stimulus, from the kid dropping a pencil next to you to the teacher writing on the board, to thinking about what’s for lunch are competing for brain space and attention concurrently. With ADHD, people have more trouble than most in directing their attention to a particular stimuls and tuning out all the others. I often describe it as trying to watch TV with someone who loves to channel surf. Just when you are getting into a show, someone comes along and changes the channel, and you don’t have the remote. Very annoying.
You get lots of little pieces of information this way, but integrating it into a coherent whole can be difficult. When you attention keeps switching to pay attention up to each novel piece of information, you can lose a grip on the story line, and having to refocus can take time. Medication for ADHD essentially gives people back the remote control, and their brains become a bit better at prioritizing what needs immediate attention and what can wait in line.
Attention essentially lets us decide what piece of information we can work on in our “working memory”- basically your mind’s lab bench. You can work on problems, write, solve math problems- but sooner or later, that project is going to need to be put away or stored, so you can move on to the next thing. Some things get trashed, others get put away for short term or long term storage- and the more interesting things are, the more other pieces of information or relevant connections you can make to the new information, the more “copies” are put away in different folders in your brain. Each time you think about your mom’s cookies for example, you not only can get to this memory from thinking about your mom, seeing a picture, but even seeing a silimar cookie or smelling cookies in the oven can bring this full memory back in all of its sensory glory. This memory has many connections, so you can retrive it from many different storage places, so to speak.
Attention is something we all want. Emotionally, it validates us as people. It allows us to make deeper and more meaningful connections. But if you overload the attention service, things become chaotic- the lab bench has too much stuff going on, and your brain can go so far as to boil over – many temper tantrums in adults and kids are caused by attention buffers beging overloaded and going into meltdown, or in entreme cases, people simply go to sleep to knock out the background noise, explaining why babies often simply go to sleep even in noisy shopping malls- their attention system gets overloaded, they get cranky, and respond by shutting off and sleeping.
If you really want to get ahead in the world of marketing, in the world of PR, presentation, education- whatever, really- it wouldn’t hurt to start by understanding how you can get and then focus the inborn attention mechanism we all have. Then you can start to figure out how to sustain it, encode information into memory, and make it useful and relevant for your audience.
John Medina has a great book out about the Brain that I really think everyone should read- it’s called Brain Rules, and I have links to it below. You could do worse than to learn how to use and manipulate the one tool every human has with them every day.
*See Brain Rules, by John Medina, for more in depth discussion about the brain and science- I’m really enjoying the Audible version. His website is incredibly helpful as well.
Tags: ADHD, analogies, attention, brain rules, education, focus, John medina, marketing, PR
