This is a thought experiment. My posts on SEO, social media and marketing, reach these days into realms which I would not normally consider. Such is the pervasive power of social media to disrupt traditional notions of value and the traditional ways of doing things that over the last eight weeks I have written in-depth, detailed posts covering parenting, obscure US legislature, the law-making process, the nomenclature of bread and whether our focus on common sense sometimes circumvents logic.
As a species we are inherently irrational. We are subject to our biology which still fires our neurons with inappropriate responses because it has not yet advanced from the days when ‘threat’ equated to ‘life or death’. Yet our day-to-day life is governed by processes which have a logical underpinning and we are judged through rational measures which lead to tangible results. The disparity makes us secretly psychotic (something which we fight against all the time), capable of snapping almost at any time our tolerance threshold is passed and unable to objectively address vital issues which in themselves should be obvious.
Being an author is a funny business full of paradoxes. You work in isolation and have to try to reflect the opinions, views and tastes of a really wide audience. Work is incredibly intensive for short bursts of 18-20 hour days (sometimes) followed by relatively long periods of inactivity when you are waiting for your next book contract to come through or the next great idea to percolate through your head and ‘hit you’. You love reading yet have to stay away from it when you write in case it filters through and its style affects your own voice. You write for many readers who will have diverse needs and experiences yet you only worry about what your editor will think and what reviewers will say. And everyone you meet thinks your job is a lot more glamorous than theirs.
I know grandmothers made a career out of telling us all that we are special but in a world of hyper-connected businesses, speed-of-light communications and always-on connections we all need a little more proof than a reassuring voice coloured with emotion, to make us believe it.
Just over five years ago AMD looked set to overtake long-time rival Intel and finally establish itself at the forefront of computer chip architecture. Its chipsets were the fastest in the market, its revenue had grown 91% in just one year, it bought ATI in order to dominate the gamers’ market and in the meantime rival Intel had just shed 10,000 jobs and was seeing a drop in profit in the order of 40%. Anyone buying a laptop today knows this has not happened, if anything, judging by the paucity of products with the AMD logo on them it would appear that the company has lost its way a little.
There is an unwritten contract governing the complex process of passing laws which I have been thinking about for some time and which I am going to share with you. Lawmakers passing Bills do so under the knowledge that the laws they pass must be enforceable. The passing of a law which no one would be willing to follow would make a mockery of government, weaken the legal system and break the implicit covenant of trust which exists between a government and its people.
On a site that’s focused on technology and social media and their impact the question of whether there may or may not exist evil people might seem out of context, to say the least. Yet technology, SEO and social media are only important because of the way we use them and as social media breaks down barriers, erodes traditionally sequestered enclaves and creates communities out of what, in the past, would have been just individuals, the question is perfectly apt.
There is a danger with labels which we think we know what they mean, to blindside us into making mistakes which are based upon lazy assumptions. Back in 1992 Francis Fukuyama gained instant global fame with his book The End of History and the Last Man which argued that with the fall of Communism as a dominant ideology human history had entered a brand new chapter which was going to be less antithetical than the years preceding it, and therefore, arguably, less interesting from a historical point of view.
The death-knell appears to have sounded for the résumé (the old-fashioned CV). If you are busy beautifully lining up all your years at school, college, work experience and the time you interned for your dad’s firm, in the hope that it’ll get you a job in this uncertain economy you might want to take a peek at what’s going on in the world of job recruiting courtesy of social media.
When it comes to social media marketing usually you just want to know what to do. What formula to apply to your business, rather than why. Because social media is really not new, though our examination of it in an online context is, there is actually a formula you can apply which works every time.
