Our world is an incredibly noisy place. Over 6 billion people live life and make noise: talking and writing and sharing about their lives, their needs, the desires, their dreams, their visions, their passions. Some make more noise(even when dead), and some make less.
Marketing is the art of getting your message heard in the midst of this noise. It is a challenge, and growing more so. Every day there are new tools that enable us to write more, share more, talk more, in more ways, over more mediums.
- When Heidi and I married in 1995, the web was not yet born: today the Internet is savaging newspaper circulation.
- When strategicnetwork.org was first created in early 1999, blogs did not exist: but in August 1999 Pyra Labs launched Blogger and today by some estimates there are over 50 million blogs in existence—the largest of which have circulations that dwarf most newspapers and magazines.
- When our family departed for Southeast Asia in December 2004, Youtube did not exist—but in February 2005 it launched, and today streams over 1 billion videos daily.
- Since then, social networking software has likewise taken off: Twitter, for example, is barely 2 years old and yet has over 50 million users; Facebook has over 200 million.
These tools often reflect one of two modes: global chatter and global shouting. “Chatter” is the normal daily mode, but on occasion a “global shout” can be heard, dominating everything everywhere. The death of Michael Jackson was one example of this (interestingly, the elections in Iran were less so).
Becoming a celebrity or a leading global voice in this kind of context is next to impossible, particularly for those who are primarily interested in missions. However, the good news is that a ‘plausible promise’ can cut through the clutter because of the Internet.
Here’s how: by making a specific, measurable, achievable plausible promise and sticking to it, you commit yourself to the time required to become an expert in your particular niche. (Malcolm Gladwell has written an excellent piece on the 10,000 hours required to become an expert in his bookOutliers: The Story of Success). You can share this developing expertise through any of a myriad of channels: blogging is perhaps the easiest, but you can also use Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc.
As you write, share, and talk about your area of expertise, your posts will begin to attract attention, particularly through Google’s massive index. This is where it’s important for you to be as specific as possible, as practical as possible, as useful as possible, and as prolific as possible. You need to figure out and uncover common keywords people use to refer to your ‘niche’—because these are the keywords people will be searching for.
In summary, the key attribute of a promise is not to make you appealing or heard by the most people. It is to make you findable by the right people: people who share your values and are actively searching for people like them—people like you. So figure out your promise, and start making yourself findable!
