It’s interesting to think of the ramifications of the work we do. None of the people that worked on the beginning pieces had any idea what their work would become.

That should inspire all of us to work with:

• humility to know when we are wrong, hear the critique, and make change
• imagination so we can even begin to conceive of vision and unintended (or intended) consequences
• love so that we can seek the betterment of society through what we do

White space is typically a term used in graphic design that means the space between elements in a composition. It’s often the mark of simple, clean, and clear design.

The past month we’ve looked at white space in new ways.

In “White Space (Part 1)” we note, as did Da Vinci, that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Often complex ideas can be best explained by using metaphors or examples. By utilizing these techniques, we can all bring a greater understanding to what we do.

“White Space (Part 2)” looks at how the internet is creating another sort of white space. By having multitudes of information always available when we search for it, we can relax, clear our brains, and be ok with decentralized knowledge.

All of these approaches to white space lead to a hopeful reality for our emerging world:

Great ideas will win.

This is largely due to the technological changes happening right now, in real time. The internet is redefining “authority”.

Culturally, the playing field is leveling. It’s less about how much influence you can buy and more about how much influence you can earn. It’s about how good your ideas are and, of course, how well you communicate them.

Here’s why:

1. We’re in an opt-in world. Increasingly, we only consume the information and media that we want to. We self-select the influences we want to have and so we care more about what those people and brands say. Time-shifiting products like TiVo, DVRs, podcasts, other on-demand services, and even Google itself, mean that we get what we want when we want it. The role of interruption-based messages (like traditional advertising) is changing drastically.
2. Communities are evolving, and they’re going online. Instead of turning to big media outlets to tell us what’s happening and what’s cool, we are looking more and more to our hand-picked communities (or, as Seth Godin calls them, “tribes”). These tribes are developing online where we can create and digest tons of content, stay in touch with more people than ever, and essentially leverage our time, our expertise, and the value bring to the table.
3. All media is becoming “social media”. This means that we can engage with and/or contribute to the messages we consume like never before. Walls are down. Gatekeepers are dead. Ideas can spread with the click of a mouse or cell phone button. For example, if one of your Twitter messages is “retweeted” by a few folks and again retweeted by some of their friends, you’ve reached an audience of thousands within seconds. We have more potential for influence and power than ever before.

The real question is, what are we going to do with it?
Brody

P.S. A great example of this whole concept is that in a matter of days, over 1,000 people signed to participate 40 Days of Water, a Blood:Water Mission campaign to bring clean water to our neighbors in Africa. In the 2 days after launch, about 10,000 people had visited the special website dedicated to the campaign. All of this happened almost exclusively through social media and word of mouth. It’s incredible.

Wordswell had the privilege of building the website and software application that is supporting this campaign. You can sign up to participate by making water your only beverage for 40 days. Otherwise, if you’d like to donate to the cause, visit my profile page at http://40Days.bloodwatermission.com/brodybond.

Information overload is crushing to the soul.

It’s why we should all be excited about emerging web technologies. Here’s why:

We will no longer have to wade through the mire of content packed into tight, unsearchable places.

The old way

Jam lots of content into a printed newsletter. Force people to have to read though everything to find the pieces of content they actually want. Make sure none of this content is ever accessible again. Do not leverage this content outside the scope of your current audience. Oh, and spend lots of money to print and mail it.

The newer way

Put all of your content online – text, pictures, audio, and video. Allow users to see titles, summaries, categories, and tags to find what is useful to them. Make all this content searchable, both so that it can be found in the future and so outsiders might find something valuable to read. Store all this content for free (regardless of how many people see it). Allow folks to comment, share, link to, and otherwise engage your content.

The web lets us spread out information. It allows us to find information on demand. It’s like a proxemic white space.

It allows us to find those needles in the haystacks.

It allows us to breath.

It also levels the playing field of influence… but more on that in Part 3 next week.

Create white space. Revive your soul,

brody

Mike Metzger of The Clapham Institute writes a weekly must-read piece called the Clapham Commentary.

Mike will often talk about the concept of “ordering your loves.” Let me explain how I understand the idea:

Imagine you have these 3 ideas, goals, or let’s call them “loves”: vacation, money, and time at home. Let’s first note that none of those things are intrinsically bad (or good).

If you love vacation more than than you love time at home, that will directly affect how you plan your year. Just because you love vacation more than time at home doesn’t mean you’ll never be home. Rather, one priority informs the other, and in this case, you’ll be heading to the beach!

Now, let’s say you love money more than vacation. All of a sudden, there is a different and higher priority that informs your decision making. Now, though you love vacation more than time at home, you may actually be more inclined to stay at home so that you can save money. It’s a worthy sacrifice because you’re responding to a greater love.

Here’s the twist: let’s say you love your family more than you love money. Now what do you do? Which is more critical to the success of that even-greater love: vacation or staying at home (or saving money)? Moreover, what is a greater love than even your family? Your career? God? The environment?

There isn’t an answer. But there is a guiding principle: How you order your loves will directly affect the decisions you make.

What does your organization love? What are the order of those loves? What hills do you die on – and in what order?

Do your customers care about knowing those things? Absolutely.

Go tell them,

brody

P.S. Wordswell is looking for a research intern.

Listen to all those “bad” notes.

They are exactly the reason this experiment was a success.

And they are exactly how to get people to walk up your staircase.

Because if people are hitting bad notes it means that they are allowed to hit bad notes. And if they’re allowed to hit bad notes, then they have freedom. And if they have freedom, then they can choose to contribute. And once they contribute to something, then they are vested in it.

And if someone is vested in you, your history is changed.

None of this happens if you stay in control. How do you give up control? Enable your customers to be creators, sharers, collaborators, lovers, fools, fans, advocates. To put it another way, let them be themselves. Just make sure you’re a valuable part of the conversation along the way.

Practically speaking, what can you do? Make your content accessible. Allow comments on your blog. Respond. Give away secrets. Tweet. Ask for advice from your clients. Post that ridiculous photo. Put down your defenses. Talk about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Don’t just give the polished impression of yourself. Give the transparent one.

And follow it up with engagement. Prove you’re listening. This is a fundamental shift in the way most “marketing” has happened in the past.

The days of control are over.

The days of inspiration are here. Better start getting more creative… and more humble. Why? Because people have more options than ever. We are all more likely to be commodities. Most of us are staircases. Some of us are cool, flashy escalators. Few of us have the courage to let people walk all over us by turning ourselves into instruments.

But if you believe in what you’re doing in the world, if you believe your product or service makes a difference, isn’t that exactly what you want people to be doing? It’s the only way you can earn the right to be heard and gain influence. Why? So you can be the staircase that guides your clients to the light of day.

Inspire,

brody

P.S. If people are going to use your staircase for all its worth (and give you their time or their money along the way), they must be delighted to do so. There is no delight without surprise. It is incumbent upon us, not the pedestrians, to make our staircases surprising. That’s why Wordswell asks our clients to take risks. We help you create surprise. Wanna start 2010 well? Jump. We can push you if you need it.

The conclusion? Metzger writes, “People tend to conform to social customs, or what others call peer pressure. When people discover what most of their peers are already doing, they’re more likely to begin doing it themselves.” (Emphasis mine.) When there is “social proof” that something is a good idea, more people hop on the bandwaggon.

So how can you get your customers socially proving that other people should spend their time or money with you?

First of all, we need to understand that people have an unprecedented number of options when it comes to finding the goods and services they want. Additionally, the providers of goods and services now have new and innumerable ways of communicating about their brand. Both are largely the result of the forces of the internet.

In light of this, brands and organizations need to start adopting tribe mentalities. Meaning, your best chance at success is through ever-expanding influence. For more info on tribes and marketing, google Seth Godin.

In a tribe mentality, you as the leader (the brand that people love) need to create your own cultural norms, customs, and even your own language. These all contribute to a shared experience amongst your fans and members – and they create the dynamic that is the tribe. Metzger puts it this way, “People tend to convert to what their surrounding culture tells them is normative.”

Never before has this been so important, and never before have there been so many tools to do this. Social media is a key set of tools you can be strategically using to create your own normative culture. Social media is the easiest and fastest way for you to gain social proof that you’re worth the attention of others.

Make sure that you are creating customer experiences that make them want to vouch for you. Once you do that, make sure you’re helping to create venues where they can share their experience. The tools exist. Ever hear of a “re-tweet”?

Let’s describe this tree. It’s:

• Different
• Evergreen, long-lasting
• Serving those who use it
• Easy to tell if you want to use it
• Easy to find when being sought for
• Strong under the weight of much use
• Attractive (in content, purpose, and aesthetic)
• What else? Share your comments on what differentiates this tree.

I just need a website…

The funny thing is how little thought has gone into what the purpose of the website is before the process begins. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; I don’t think much about a lot of things that are probably very important but aren’t a focus of my time.

The truth is that Wordswell’s initial client meeting (“the Storyboard” meeting) is spent asking hundreds of questions to help our clients narrow their and focus and determine exactly what they want to accomplish on the web. These questions usually have very little to do with the web itself. It normally has to do with our clients customers, their business, and their market. It is uniquely focused on our “client’s client”.

We are big fans of questions. Seth Godin is also (and we’re big fans of Seth’s). Check out his questions to ask before starting a web project.

If you need help figuring out the right questions to ask before you embark on your new web project give us a holler at 443.804.0108.

You’ve heard that social media is all about “engagement” – and it certainly is. But it is also about serving your clients. More about that in a later post…

Focusing on something you don’t have (but think you need) can be a dangerous, common pattern. The pattern is to identify something you lack and use that as an obstacle that prevents you from doing what you really want.

With an obstacle identified, we feel better. No harm done, right? No harm except that nagging sense in the back of our brain that we really should be doing something differently. Not to worry: most people come to terms with it over time.

I do this. I let obstacles to a task, a passion, or a goal serve as excuses to not attempt them. It’s not a fear of failure. It’s a fear of not having a perfect process.

This is stupid.

Chris continues:

Fortunately, many of the obstacles we perceive are not really obstacles. Many of the things we think we need are unnecessary.

Isn’t that true?

Some of this is tied to thankfulness. If I were to be more thankful for what I have, I’d be more prone to go do something with it. Instead, I wait for something – often the perfect, measurable, replicable, neatly-wrapped, guaranteed-outcome process – and I have an excuse for inaction.

What obstacles do you use as excuses?

Chris wrote a post today called “What Makes a Community?” and it echoed thoughts of my own. Recommended reading.

One thing I took away from his article is that the necessary conditions for building community are also true for building brands. As you are building your brand, Chris’s ideas about community might serve as inspiration. They did for me. Here’s the summary recap of Chris’s thoughts (my comments in italics):

A community needs a leader. That’s you, business owner, CEO, pastor, president. There is no brand if you don’t act. Need help aligning your vision and your action?

A community needs friends AND enemies. There is no inclusion without exclusion. You want fans (short for “fanatics”), not a lot of people who just think you’re ok. Do your ads annoy people? Good. They’re listening. If you are afraid of having enemies, you can’t have a brand. Do you think Starbucks is Starbucks because everyone likes them? No. Their brand has attracted friends of Starbucks – and enemies.

A strong community needs long-term commitment. That’s why you build a brand – to get commitment. It starts with your commitment to your audience and that commitment never stops. You must earn their commitment to you along the way. As you keep delivering on the promise that is your brand, as you keep adding value to the lives of your audience, you will have your own community – that you lead – that has long-term commitment.

A community needs its own language. YES YES YES! This point cannot be understated. My best friends and I communicate in a way that no one else understands. The world’s people-groups are organized by language. Certainly, you need to be clear about who you are and what you do in this world. BUT, if you develop a language that you use with your clients exclusively, and they use with you exclusively, you have built a community. The person that orders an iced-quad-venti-whole-milk-caramel-macchiato isn’t crazy. They’ve experienced love, commitment, and a language from a brand – and they are making that brand very rich in the meantime.

A community needs to actively (and carefully) solicit other members. Don’t grow too fast. Not everyone is a good client. Your brand’s integrity is worth more than your bottom line this year.

A community built on hope is stronger than one built on fear. Sales and discounts don’t build brands. Do you want people to BUY FROM YOU RIGHT NOW!!! or know that you’ll be there tomorrow and the day after that, ready to take care of them when they need what you have to offer? Your brand is strong when people think of you when they have a need that you fulfill.

Maybe it’s not that “the principles of building community are the same principles of building a brand.”

Maybe it is that brand-building and community-building are the same thing.

What do you think?

only matters if it has

INFLUENCE

only matters if it has a

VOICE

only matters if it adds

VALUE

only matters if it offers good

CONTENT

only matters if people can

FIND IT.

Message Creation isn’t just about getting you a website, logo, or brochure.

With Message Creation you bring into focus the value you offer your audience, establish your voice in a crowded world, earn the right to have influence, and deliver on the promise that is your brand.

Wordswell helps our clients do this. And we offer production leadership and creative consulting when it comes time to create your identity, website, email campaign, film, etc.

Need help?
brody

So what does it all mean?