Frank Chimero on enthusiasm as currency:
Blogs are free to read. What that means is that you reward places with your attention and enthusiasm. … Audience enthusiasm may be our new currency as long as many things on the internet are free. …. Read [a blog]. Email them and say you enjoy the blog, and tell them what you like about it. Recommend it to friends. If a blog starts to suck, you should email them and say “Your posts are turning into fluff.”
Michael Bierut said something in passing once that I’ve not been able to stop thinking about, and I paraphrase:
If you like someone’s work, tell him or her. Even if you don’t know the person, especially if you don’t know the person, tell the person you like his or her work.
This simple act of enthusiasm, of kindness, of affection for good, is all too rare. Elsewhere this week, Seth Godin with similar sentiments on online friends:
Real world friends are hard to find and hard to change. But virtual friends? If your online friends aren’t egging you on… If your online friends don’t spread the word about the work you’re doing… If your online friends aren’t respectfully challenging your deeply held beliefs… If your online friends don’t demand the best from you… Then perhaps you need new online friends.
It seems there’s a trajectory on this note, as over at Lined & Unlined (whose increased frequency of late is quite exciting; head over if you haven’t yet), Rob Giampietro on the nature of critique:
My goal these days is to write things that, whenever possible, are slower, richer, and hopefully more enduring. I’ve … consciously shifted tone. Back then, following a lot of design writing I was reading, I thought everything should have a bit of an edge. …. I now realize that’s not really what I like to read or what I want to write.
See also:
The kindness of strangers, told through a bystander on a NYC subway platform, via 1997 This American Life (00:35)For every tough piece I write, for every difficult decision, there’s an online set of friends giving feedback — short form, long form, solicited and unsolicited advice, close friends and strangers. Others, online friends still, time zones away, make a point to say hello — in person — when nearby. Audience enthusiasm, whether only sharing a browser, considering the same problem, or in the same city, is a rare currency with high value.
March 2010
8 posts
Excellent article by James Surowiecki in The NewYorker about why middle is not an option.
If a product wasn’t “far better” than what was already out there, it had “no reason for being…
While the high and low ends are thriving, the middle of the market is in trouble. Previously, successful companies tended to gravitate toward what historians of retail have called the Big Middle, because that’s where most of the customers were. These days, the Big Middle is looking more like “the mushy middle”…
Full article here.
Here is a random quote based on stats from a typical blatant obvious research project: Consumers are x% more likely to buy from the brands they follow on Twitter, and x% more likely to buy from a brand they follow on Facebook.
Off course we are more likely to buy from a brand that we claim are our “friend”. Seriously, we have friended them, how more obvious can it get that we like that particular brand.
Argh. Getting seriously tired of hollow research.
Sometimes it is good to be reminded that it is possible to be legally “correct” in your public communication without being overly boring. Target has a rather charming and warm “about” text at the bottom of their pressreleases. It seems like a caring company with a focus on their guests. Or customers as some call them, or the blatant stupid ones go for consumers. Nuff said. Be inspired.
Minneapolis-based Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) serves guests at 1,740 stores in 49 states nationwide and at Target.com. Target is committed to providing a fun and convenient shopping experience with access to unique and highly differentiated products at affordable prices. Since 1946, the corporation has given 5 percent of its income through community grants and programs like Take Charge of Education. Today, that giving equals more than $3 million a week.
