I AM AMUSED. Some time ago, in an issue of Entrepreneur magazine there was a postcard advertising splashmedia.com’s “Social Media For CEO’s Boot Camp.” It was traveling to a dozen different cities with registration via website or phone. If the use of social media is as all-powerful as the little card suggested, how come the seminars needed to be sold by antiquated print media? The sales done by antiquated pitch men and a traveling road show? Registrations taken by phone? Fortunately for them, this irony will be lost on plenty who register.
I’m merely pointing out the idiocy of suggesting that social media can replace all other media or a real sales process. If it could, why not sell whatever they’re selling with a single 90-minute webinar – no flights, no hotel rooms. Why not “fill” that webinar only via promo on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?
I have nothing against the folks who placed this advertising card in the magazine. I use them only as demonstration of a very important point: few sheep become multi-millionaires. You must think for yourself, think critically, and question everything, to successfully see through, smell and shuffle aside the monstrous quantity of BS. Focus on and use the highest value, most reliable tools and activities and investments that move you and your business closer to your goals. That’s what my NO BS is supposed to stand for.
It is easy to be seduced. In Greek mythology, there are the “Sirens” who, by beauty and/or hypnotic singing, cause sailors to abandon their navigation and crash and sink their ships in an effort to better hear and see these Sirens. I’m a little fuzzy on the details, and forget the Sirens’ motives. Doesn’t matter. Every day, sexy Sirens are seeking to distract you from the steady implementation of what definitely works; to fascinate you with things more melodic, alluring and hypnotic.
Don’t make the moral here too narrow – I do not mean blanket indictment of social media. Far from it. In fact, elsewhere in that same issue of Entrepreneur, I read the most interesting thing about social media I’ve encountered in a while. Emerging media, even enormously popular, temporary fad media can offer real opportunity to some marketers. That isn’t the critical question, but just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should be doing it ahead of or instead of other things.
I’m talking here about judgment and self-imposed discipline. Several years ago, there was a documentary about the iconic coach Vince Lombardi. It showed how obsessed with and committed to one single play – the power sweep – Lombardi was. He worked on perfecting it and he ran it again and again and again. In the Super Bowl, his Packers ran up 30-something points against the New York Giants’ zero points, his defense gave the Giants the goose-egg, and his “power sweep” provided the points. One single play. Brilliantly engineered then perfectly executed so as to be nearly unstoppable. Mr. Lombardi might very well have been deaf to the Sirens.
