Methodologies come easy. Mindsets not so much.

I was recently asked to submit a session idea for a conference next year that focuses exclusively on new media--with a heavy emphasis on social media. In looking at the lineup of impressive presentations, I saw everything from how to start a blog...and how to quantify the success of social media...to how to identify appropriate bloggers and create evangelists.

To be sure, these are all pivotal areas to cover. After all, for the uninitiated (or "newbies") these are fundamental building blocks. Be it in front of an audience, or one-on-one with a client or colleague, I speak to these areas quite a bit. In fact, I often refer to them as "building blocks."

But before I build, I work to lay the foundation.

I explain how, before we can change our marketing tactics, we need to change our mindsets. Because changing mindsets is where progress (and success) really happen. Always has, always will. Whether in business, society, even science and government.

Look how Galileo worked to change mindsets in urging others to understand 'twas not the sun that revolved around us, but us around the sun. While not being the center of the universe didn't work so well for him at the time (the church declared him guilty of heresy and placed him under house arrest), it's now the foundation of how we view our place in the world universe.

Now he's now hailed as the "Father of Modern Science."

Or how Queen Elizabeth needed to change her mindset from becoming a woman who honored duty above all else, to a woman who needed to change her mindset and place more emotion first, tradition second.

She even admitted to needing to "modernize."

Good ol' Gore worked so many decades trying to get us to focus on the climate crisis only to be told it wasn't a political priority. After finally going to film he was able to open our minds to global warming being "not a political issue, but a moral one."

And his dedication might just save the world (and revered as much as any president).

If you think about it, when we say the world has changed, often times it means that people's minds have changed. People open their minds to a new opportunity or new market, or they change their thinking about how to solve an issue, or adopt a new type of behavior. Ask any marketer and you'll find that the toughest objective is getting customers to change their habits and ways.

Now it's time that the marketers will have to change. Irony is funny like that, eh?

I've said it before but, with social media, it's "trends first, tools next." Because social media is a set of tools, the consumer-driven trends are what drive the adoption. But you would be amazed at how often marketers don't take the time to truly understand the environment (or develop a sound strategy) and delve right into the tactics. No wonder we hear so many savvy marketers lament how the majority of professionals "just don't get it."

The learning curve, I find, is not in how to use tools such as blog or Twitter, but in understanding how markets are sharing, what part they want to play in the business cycle and what part they want brands to play in the media they're using.

So in submitting my idea for the conference I'm not focusing on methodologies, how-to's, to-do's or checklists. Nope. Those topics are well covered. I'll let you know when the conference is announced. But, in the meantime, I'll keep doing what I can to change hearts and, most especially, minds.

Some helpful posts to learn more:

• The real story of social media
• The Share Economy (PDF)
• Understanding the range of value people find in blogging
• How bad feedback can really be quite good for your business
• How WOM works
• A compilation of mind-changing goodness posts are here

Comments

[Nathan Snell]

Couldn't agree more, CK.

The tools can garner some success on their own, but the potential success the tools can generate is that much more if the appropriate mindset is behind it.

More than that, as you say, being aware of the trends and the mindsets allows a company to adopt the new as opposed to getting caught in the stagnation of tools that were once hot quickly diffusing.

[Lewis Green]

CK,

I could go on and on about the messages I receive from this post, but I won't other than to say Bravo! and encourage you to stop by both the Buzz Bin and my blog for our most recent posts, which are essentially toasting the same concepts: It isn't about tools, it's about building strategies to achieve goals. To do that, we must first build a foundation based on customer knowledge.

[Gavin Heaton]

Many people (read marketers) know that things have changed (and want to respond). What they find hard to understand is that this change has occurred in the patterns of consumer behaviour -- and this has had a transformative effect on what we consider to be of "value". Paying attention to the way that people now interact with brands can yield important insight ... understanding how this changes the game -- in what you call the "share economy" is the important first step.

[gillberk]

If there is one thing that concerns me, it is that many people approach EFT with a limited understanding of its potential and therefore limit the benefits they can achieve from using it. In this post and the posts to follow I'd like to consider this issue and encourage you to expand your vision of the freedom you can achieve using these wonderful techniques.I believe we should settle for nothing less than complete freedom.
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Gillberk

SEO

[Tania]

Hi, Everything dynamic and very positively! :) Thank you Tania