Categories: Articles

We're Just Getting Started… And You Should Too

A couple of days ago, I asked this question: Are You Excited To Be Here? While the question was more geared towards your motivation to serve the Marketing industry, it is directly tied into the thoughts in this Blog posting. I just completed a six hour-plus drive from Montreal to upstate New York, and in between futzing around with the Garmin GPS system and playing air guitar to Sirius satellite radio, I started reflecting on how much Podcasting, Blogs and even the newer stuff like Twitter, Second Life and Facebook seem to have hit a rut for those taking part (sort of like what Seth Godin talks about in The Dip), but unlike The Dip I don’t think that it’s about pushing through or stopping.

I think there’s something bigger to contemplate here: we’re just getting started. We haven’t even really hit mile number one yet. To quit Blogging for Micro-Blogging, to leave a virtual world to set up an online social network, are all actions of the early adopter. We’ve talked about the "shiny object syndrome" here on a multiple of occasions, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing (how can I? I’m just as guilty as the next shiny object lover). I can’t even remember the last time I Blogged about Second Life (that’s like so ten days ago), and I don’t find myself mentioning MySpace even close to the same amount of times as I mention Facebook.

For the most part, the majority of people who abandon a channel to find something new probably discover pretty quickly that while it was fun to set-up the account, make everything look good, add some content and connect to like-minded people, the net result is a lot of work and maintenance. From a Marketing perspective the point is not to do things based off of how "new" the channel is, or how cool you think your brand will look in it. The challenge is to understand that no matter which new media channel you choose, including Blogging (which has been around for close to a decade now), it’s all still relatively new and undefined (let’s not even talk about the ROI here).

For all of the fanfare we read about Twitter and FriendFeed today, I believe there to still be an equal amount of energetic people still interested in the Twitter and FriendFeed of last year (or five years ago), and I also have an inkling that all of these new Digital Marketing opportunities are still undefined because we are just getting started here.

That all being said, as a Marketer thinking about the week ahead and how you’re going to make it count more than the one that just passed, maybe this coming Monday should be the one where you get started trying it out and helping us all define it too.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.