The great promise of low-cost, convenient digital communications organizations could leverage for marketing and advocacy often has given away to frustration.
Even those who hire the brandname experts in scientific fields such as search engine optimization (SEO) and initially get results find the methodologies soon reach the point of diminishing or no returns. The reason is that the web and mobile are just-in-time mediums. They are always changing. Simultaneously the marketplace also is changing, often in hours. The competitor inserts the keyword "predictive analytics" on the website and Twitter. That move leaves your commercial messaging, as well as your business which doesn't leverage BigData, at a disadvantage which will continue to grow.
How to navigate Fast Time? Of course, we have to do continual course correction. Last month's bundle of tactics which generated a viral communication - here is a case study of an example - might constitute a flawed approach today.
But the prerequisite to being able to "course correct" on a dime is to be able to embrace change as a fundamental reality. Not easy, especially for us Baby Boomers who were trained and rewarded in Corporate America for conforming to set policies and procedures. That kind of professional socialization can keep us stuck.
To get unstuck or at least try to, I had to turn to Buddhism, a way of thinking which the Beatles, Steve Jobs, and Leonard Cohen also found the tool for staying open. For several months I have become a "regular" at the New Haven Zen Center in Connecticut. On Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, the group of monks and ordinary people like myself meditate. The most useful mantra I have stumbled upon is breath in, focus on "Clear Thinking" and breath out, focus on "Don't Know."
The mindset of Not Knowing takes the heat off us in this time of unprecedented economic turbulence for having all the answers. Instead, we are free to search for what might be effective today.
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