By the Ocean
Sunrise 75 Degrees
5:52 a.m.
The less you think, the more shallow and ineffective your actions become.
It’s easy to do this in business. The Social Media Borg makes you think you have to move fast. That if you can’t complete it TODAY, click it NOW, receive the reward IMMEDIATELY, that it’s not worth doing.
This is all a lie.
Look at the proof. More people than ever in business chasing attention from an algorithm that is never going to supply it. “But keep trying, little puppet… maybe someday will be YOUR day!”
I spent the last four weeks preparing a nationwide advertising campaign for a client. Coming up with the idea alone took hours. Then the implementation took many days.
I didn’t think about how to game an algorithm or please the Borg, I thought about how to satisfy a BUYER.
Social media has made you think there is value in an eyeball. And that if you get a lot of eyeballs, everything can work out.
It DOESN’T tell you what an expensive, inefficient, total waste of time that is. If you’ve ever sold ANYTHING for real, you know this. Because talking to the wrong people will make you think you suck faster than just about anything else.
Imagine being in the business of selling stuff to golf fanatics. The social media borg would tell you to chain yourself to the Tubes and the Grams and the Toks and work full-time as their unpaid intern, seven days per week, forever. You up for that?
Thinking harder, longer, deeper, better would take you another way.
It would take you to finding a list of BUYERS OF GOLF THINGS and getting what you have in front of them. These are people who actually spent money on the type of thing you are trying to sell. Compare this to the guy wasting away with his phone glued to his face, searching for something to fill that hole inside his being, while his wife is trying to tell him about something that actually matters. Does that sound like an “ideal” customer?
Getting in front of buyers is 1000X better, more effective, more profitable. Why?
Because buyers buy. And non-buyers generally DON’T.
So to work hard to make a non-buyer a buyer is usually pretty frustrating. It’s like asking an elephant to climb a tree. That’s just not what they’re built for.
This is how social media is making people stupid. By forcing them to do stupid things like talk to huge numbers of people who will never lift a finger to check out what you have.
Going to a world where everyone has been trained to expect FREE is not where you find buyers. Going to a world where people spend HOURS of their life consuming mindless drivel is not where the good customers and clients are hiding. It’s the collection bin for the lazy and aimless.
The advertising campaign I created is going to be put in front of 100,000 people who fit the EXACT profile of our buyer. That’s not 200,000 eyeballs on YouTube, that’s 100,000 real humans who have the exact problems this product/service solves.
The promotion isn’t going to show up on their screen, it’s going to sit in their home or office and wait until the time is right.
You want IMPACT, not reach. You want SALES not clicks. You want CLIENTS not tire kickers. “Reach” is the junk food they sell you because it makes your ego excited to be wanted. “All that love mommy and daddy didn’t give you can FINALLY be received by getting attention from the masses.” That’s the sick and twisted promise of the Borg that rarely materializes.
Believe it if you want. Just look at what’s happening. It’s not hard to figure out it might be time to get out of the mud pit and do something better.