Is having the tool more important to your success, or is knowing the technique more important?
A lot of people obsess over the
latest social media sites (or thelatest changes to social media sites) instead of obsessing over the content they develop and post to those sites.
Having a solid knowledge of even the very basics of creating compelling content will serve you better than knowing what the latest sparkly new social site is; Crap content is crap content no matter how brightly it shines.
Let’s take the idea to an extreme…
One that literally puts your life on the line.
If you had to go in for an emergency surgery in order to save your life, would you rather have the doctor who was solidly schooled and experienced in the techniques required for a successful outcome, or would you prefer the doctor with the shiny new set of scalpels but no experience with successfully performing the surgery?
You want the doc with the experience and knowledge and history of practice, right?
Having a scalpel doesn’t make you surgeon. Being on Facebook doesn’t make you social media marketer.
The MacGyver Principle
Remember the TV show MacGyver?Mac never had the “perfect” tools required for the task he was supposed to perform, but he always owned the techniques required to make the tools he did have work to his advantage. He knew the principles well enough to put them into practice no matter what other limitations he faced.
The same goes for being a graphic designer or a salesperson or an artist or a writer. Your talent and skill isn’t developed from the tools you have, your talent and skill comes from the techniques you learn, practice, perfect, and employ.
If call yourself a web designer you better have more than the latest and greatest responsive design templates. You better understand the principles of effective design, color theory, understanding of what visitors to the site are in search of, and solid concepts for making the user experience a positive one. Simply plugging text and photos into the newest and shiniest single-page-scrolling template doesn’t make you a super web designer no matter how many deluxe templates and fonts you own.
If you’re a writer you don’t need Scrivener or Final Draft Pro or Word for Windows. You don’t even need a computer or a tablet. At its most basic you need something to make a mark on and something to make your mark with.
The Content Matrix
I just returned from delivering a series of workshops in Austin, TX focused on techniques for creating compelling content targeted to your audience of customers and prospects. Audience feedback was through the roof and the sessions contained nary a mention of specific publishing options or social sites — we drilled down into the rich soil of how to deliver information to educate and entertain your specific audience and move them from being merely aware of your product and service to being loyal owners and users.
I’m preparing some online tools (the content comes first, the tools come second!) that I think you’ll find useful in creating your own effective (but social-media-agnostic) content, and the best way to hear about it first (and to get the discounted initial roll-out “guinea-pig” pricing) is to make sure you’re subscribed to my email list.
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