Businesses are not very reflective — they’re always looking outward for the ‘next new thing’ (a sad marketing behavior, ungrounded as a primary focus). “Economic” innovation (courtesy of Schopenhauer) is seeing existing things in new ways. The most valuable relationship (agree with Paul) are the ones already in place.

As such have never been able to understand how CRM got so focused on the ‘next customer’ and does very little to do anything to improve existing relationships.

Always test the behavior against the likelihood for success with your own ’significant other’.

You’re not making a semantic point. You’re making the fundamental point. Marketers are trained to think “channels”. A lot of being successful in this is unlearning some marketing rules and relearning some human ones.

Well done. Sorry I missed your panel.

~Jim

You cover a lot in your post, but I just want to comment on vocabulary in social media. I’m the first one to bristle when someone says they’re speaking “to” people vs “with” them and there isn’t a big enough bucket to hold all the words I’d like to see stricken from business-speak (let’s start with consumer, lead, body, etc.). But at the same time it’s important to not alienate, but educate the masses if we’re to move this whole business forward. I try to be more inclusive with my language to shift existing mental models from pre-web or web 1.0 thinking to the world of web 2.0. My use of the word “channels” is meant to help bridge that gap in many conversations, but I may have mis-spoken given the context of your comment (and the time of the evening). But now I’m interested… how would you describe the various ways (I say channels) one can use to communicate with a person (i.e. face-to-face, phone, synchronous online, asynchronous online, other) using Cluetrain-speak?

When I was fresh out of college, I worked at Bread and Circus (now Whole Foods Market)for a few years. Organic food was just gaining momentum (it was long time ago - I’m an old man) and we had a lot of people coming in who had no idea what organic (and vegan) was all about. There was a period of education (and transition) where we spent a lot of time helping people along that really weren’t on the “organic cluetrain.” Sure, it was uncomfortable for purists (many of them thought we were going to hell for popularizing organic), but look where we/they are today. I think it’s fair to draw some parallels between that time and where we are today in SM.

It’s pretty clear we’re in a period of growing interest in social media and bringing people along at their speed (and in their language) is in all of our best interests.

I read Cluetrain a while ago, but will pick it up again at your suggestion. Thanks Josh - great post!

Jim

This meme seems to pop up every few months and it rarely seems to have much connection to how business actually should/can get done. Too many people treat Cluetrain as some sort of religious text that must be followed to the letter. The underlying meanings and directions that the Cluetrain was meant to provide are fantastic, but it seems to me that they’re getting lost in the dogma.

Great article, I’m gonna pass it around my orbit. And great panel, dude. Good to have met you.