Simple is Hard Work.
June 04, 2012
By Guest Blogger, Mary Schmidt, Marketing Troubleshooter
Me. Last Friday. Hulking out. Hulk no like experts! (Yet another expert pitchin' on a LinkedIn "discussion" set me off...You won't like me when I'm angry.)
But seriously, I find it simpler to not be angry. It's better for me (and everyone else) for me to be generous, practice loving kindness and (Grrrrr, *CRASH*, *SMASH!*) let it go.
However, to get to simple, I've had to do a lot of hard work...with daily spiritual maintenance. So, I get a wee bit irked (let it go...let it go) with the eleventy billion experts purporting they can help you make seemingly everything in life SIMPLE! In only five (or ten or twelve) steps. (Anyone in AA can tell you that 12-step program is a killer. Simple to read and repeat, difficult to live.)
Same goes for business. The simpler it looks, the more work went into it (or should.) For example, I'm in the last throes of putting together the cells for my upcoming social media workshop. Very few words. Lots of graphics. Simple...looking. Lots of research, analysis and thinking went into getting to that look. With more work on the soundtrack that goes with the images. So, I get more than a wee bit irked with the gazillion social media experts who promote that social media is free, easy, simple...quick (in only 60 minutes a day!)...whatever. Get ya snake oil right here! ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED!
Saying social media is free is like saying if you pick up a hammer on the street, you're an expert carpenter. Easy? Oh sure. If you want to sweat blood on your keyboard on a regular basis. Simple? Well, yeah. A hammer is basically simple too. So is a screwdriver which...no, no, I'm not going there, way too easy. Let it go...let it go.
And, as Peter Shankman noted in his classic post - ur - rant, notes, I Will Never Hire a "Social Media Expert and Neither Should You.
I was going to call this article “All “Social Media Experts” need to go die in a fire,” but I figured I should be nicer than that...
Being an expert in Social Media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.
We’re making the same mistakes that we made during the dotcom era, where everyone thought that just adding the term .com to your corporate logo made you instantly credible. It didn’t. If that’s all you did, you emphasized even more strongly how pathetic your company was.
He said it, I didn't. I'd just like to hunt down the experts and beat them in a forehead with a brick (with the utmost loving kindness of course. The Buddha would be so proud.)
(It's also worth noting that Thoreau, who was all "simplify, simplify", had his mom doing his laundry and cooking his meals...and his cabin in the "wilderness" was about a mile from town.)
Oh yeah. That social media workshop - It's not free.:) But if you'd like to see how I fit Rube Goldberg, happy dogs, flip-flops and selling thong underwear to 1.3B Chinese into my presentations, join us! It'll be both fun and educational (and your teeth will be instantly whiter) - absolutely GUARANTEED!
As well as hard work is simple! thanks a lot for sharing.
Posted by: business marketing | June 05, 2012 at 01:38 PM