A Ticket To Discovery

At 5:15 am…

My car drove alongside the train track down towards the highway heading to the airport for my early morning flight. This train track connects many suburbs to the downtown core of Montreal. It’s at the end of my corner and you would never know it. Montreal is known for its subway system (we call it the metro), but it also has these trains. This one track, in particular, is electric. It’s also silent and runs below the street level in my area as it descends into the tunnel that connects to our central train station in the core of the city. Many people ride it. I never have. The typical drive to downtown is about twenty-five minutes from home to downtown by car. The train ride is about five minutes. My guess is that those on the train don’t know what traffic is.

Take the train.

As the haze of the day and the quiet of the streets was disrupted by my car, I had this striking image in my mind’s eye of a dad taking his young child on the train. Destination: unknown. Kids love trains and adventures. I could imagine this Dad buying two train passes, walking from their home to the train platform, and just spending the day riding the train, getting off and on at random stops and discovering new places. Kids love this kind of entertainment and it serves as a breeding ground to get them excited about discovery and travel. This transcends into adulthood and is probably one of the main reasons that travel, for many, is still something to marvel and cherish. That feeling of discovery is a magnificent one.

Your ticket to discovery…

Each and every piece of content that your brand creates is a ticket of discovering. From the shortest tweet to a long-form video or extended blog post. The content is something that you see and know, but that you are sharing with the rest of the world. It is something to marvel and cherish as well. The majority of people take the train… and they take that train for granted. It’s part of their routine and the daily grind. The majority of brands are creating content… and they take that content for granted. It’s part of their routine and the daily grind.

At 5:15 am…

My car drove alongside the electric train track down towards the highway heading to the airport for my early morning flight. As I thought about the train, the father and the young child, it made me realize how important it is to encourage that feeling of discovery and amazement in children. It also made me realize how important it is to encourage that feeling of discovery and amazement in each and every one of you. If I don’t (and you brand doesn’t) when I create content, it becomes a grind (for both you and I). It shouldn’t be a grind. Each and every piece of content that you create needs to be a ticket of discovery for your audience. Whether you are linking to another piece of content, creating an original piece of content or simply informing those who are to connected to you about something new. It is these links from one place to another one that makes the Internet such a diverse and interesting place.

Don’t waste it. Create a ticket to discovery and send everyone on a journey.