Amateur Hour
"Markets are conversations."
So begins the book The Cluetrain Manifesto, one of the classic books about marketing in the age of the Internet. It was written about ten years ago, and since then, I've heard lots of people quote the maxim above in their own writing about marketing. The idea: you can sell people something if you can get them talking about it, or get them talking with you.
About ten years later, they released an updated edition of the book, in which the starting-gun maxim had changed: "Markets are relationships." One of the co-authors goes on to explain this change came from a conversation he had with a stranger on a plane about the original idea that markets are conversations. Conversations, this stranger suggested to him, are a means of building trust, and so people are more willing to buy from a person once they've established the relationship. The conversation is just a means to this end. And so, the idea changed.
In the ten year gap between the two editions of the book, lots of people referenced the original Cluetrain Manifesto and insisted that markets were conversations. It was a popular book, containing lots of popular ideas, and so more people parroted the advice it contained in their own writings than questioned the basic content.
This is the problem with experts: we are less inclined to question them.
I'm definitely an amateur writer, and part of the reason I enjoy speaking from a pulpit of little or no authority is that I know I'm surrounded by people who will gladly tell me when I'm wrong. When we read the ideas written by any amateur, we're more likely to discern, prod, and pick apart the ideas in our own heads than we are to accept them as absolute or conclusive truths.
Not that we shouldn't listen to experts...but in some ways I think the writing of the amateur, when we know they're an amateur, can be more valuable because it's more likely to raise questions than answers, and questions are a better means of arriving at our own truths.
So begins the book The Cluetrain Manifesto, one of the classic books about marketing in the age of the Internet. It was written about ten years ago, and since then, I've heard lots of people quote the maxim above in their own writing about marketing. The idea: you can sell people something if you can get them talking about it, or get them talking with you.
About ten years later, they released an updated edition of the book, in which the starting-gun maxim had changed: "Markets are relationships." One of the co-authors goes on to explain this change came from a conversation he had with a stranger on a plane about the original idea that markets are conversations. Conversations, this stranger suggested to him, are a means of building trust, and so people are more willing to buy from a person once they've established the relationship. The conversation is just a means to this end. And so, the idea changed.
In the ten year gap between the two editions of the book, lots of people referenced the original Cluetrain Manifesto and insisted that markets were conversations. It was a popular book, containing lots of popular ideas, and so more people parroted the advice it contained in their own writings than questioned the basic content.
This is the problem with experts: we are less inclined to question them.
I'm definitely an amateur writer, and part of the reason I enjoy speaking from a pulpit of little or no authority is that I know I'm surrounded by people who will gladly tell me when I'm wrong. When we read the ideas written by any amateur, we're more likely to discern, prod, and pick apart the ideas in our own heads than we are to accept them as absolute or conclusive truths.
Not that we shouldn't listen to experts...but in some ways I think the writing of the amateur, when we know they're an amateur, can be more valuable because it's more likely to raise questions than answers, and questions are a better means of arriving at our own truths.