Remarkable things get us talking. Sometimes remarkable things stop us from talking too.
by Steve Tsuida, March 13
I just finished a series of lunch-&-learn talks here for the Kryos team on the New Marketing and on giving great presentations (how's that for humble?). One point I tried to emphasized was that the New Marketing relies on what Marketing guru's like Seth Godin call "word of mouse"—the rapid passalong of ideas through connected communities. Unlike word of mouth which moves at the pace of our face-to-face social calendars, word of mouse happens in a click and moves at the pace of electronic communication. A blog post. An email. A discussion thread. Even an instant message ping. With no "effort headwind", the message spreads through a connected community like a teaspoon of ink spreads through pitcher of water. [More after the break.]
"Have you seen this?"
"Go here."
"Read this."
"Check this out."
I'm a part of a community called "TechCrunch Readers". I subscribe to the blog TechCrunch, and when something remarkable surfaces there I pass it along to like-minded friends and peers and in a matter of minutes I'm part of a multi-thousand person storm of talk about that remarkable thing. While my "talk" may never sell a single unit of product, what it does cause is a huge surge in both the idea's presence in the general conversation (the "buzz" media always picks up on), and in the ideas presence in all sorts of online search and aggregation.
This morning's word-of-mouse storm was set off by an article about a truly remarkable new invention: a little band you attach around your neck which almost magically reads your nerve impulses and lets you talk to a computer without actually talking.
Voiceless voice. You've all done this. You've all read an article or thought a thought and felt the muscles in your mouth and tongue move and articulate the words even though you weren't opening your mouth and saying anything. Some of you just did it now and will be stuck doing it for five or ten more minutes—sorry, it's like when people ask you to not think about breathing. Imagine silent voice control of your PC, silently dictating to your Blackberry. Imagine giving people with less mobility access to our connected communities, without having to be that guy who has to say everything he wants to type, out loud.
Remarkable things go viral. It takes about 10 seconds for anyone who types or menus or uses a keypad to get why this invention is a big deal, and 10 more seconds to tell three or four people you know. That's a measure of "remarkable", that it's obviously worth noticing and that it's something you need to make a remark about.
Homework:
You may have something remarkable in your inventory, your skillset, or your overall offering that could start a word-of-mouse storm in a community. Is that community a connected community? If not, is there a way you could be enabling that connectedness?
Definitions:
Effort Headwind - Anything that provides an excuse not to act. Scheduling conflicts. Social awkwardness. Distance. Postage. Having to actually walk somewhere.
Community - In this context, we mean a bunch of people who have something in common.
Connected Community - A community of people who have common place (such as a Portal) in which to do their thing.
