How you talk is just as important as what you say.
For example, I expect nothing less than pure relevance and usefulness in Rich Schefren’s writings. And so far he has never failed to deliver on this. I just finished “Attention Age Doctrine” and I must say he’s brought everything I’ve learned thus far into a cohesive document that says Web 2.0 is pro-community and anti-traditional marketing. (ie create something of value, disseminate it like crazy, let it spread virally and then start selling…right?)
But it’s hard for me to conceive that Wordful or any other struggling brand could grow so exponentially large as Schefren describes what could be. He has a way with his words that make me feel very uncomfortable, a doomsday tone in his writing, that say “if you don’t act now exactly as I say you’re going to drop like a fly.”
I respect Rich for this because I know it’s his intent to make me feel that way. He wants me to feel that if I don’t change my ways right now I’m not going to survive, which to some degree is true (his advice I admit is right on target.) But it’s definitely a matter of personality– I have subscribing to that scary tone and stories of “the world’s leading marketing mavens meeting in ultra-secret for the first time in history in a four thousand year old French castle” that I can’t quite subscribe to.
That gets me thinking constructively on how I’d like Wordful to come across to people — friendly yet deep, didactic and flowing, clever and, how shall I say — “good-looking” — when you read it. I want my choice and arrangement of words to look and sound smooth and true, beautiful and deep. To attract the reader in such a natural way as to make them sit down and join the conversation long before introducing themselves.
More on this in another, better post.
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