metahuman Archives | Ian M Rountree

Embracing Practice and Theory in Social Marketing

January 10, 2011 by Ian 5 Comments

In a typical paroxysm of brilliant insight, Amber Naslund posted what she called “one of those pensive posts [that needs a lot of thought]” on Sunday evening. The crux of the post was how theory can play a role in such highly action-sequence oriented fields like marketing – especially social media and content marketing.

As Amber says in the post, current social media advice is largely prescriptive; How To and 3 Steps To, and so on. This is beneficial to a point, but is it all we can do to move the work forward?

From her post – Elements of Knowledge and Embracing Social Media:

And in many ways, when you’re starting something new, that’s exactly what you want. The what and the how. Some understanding of what the established and familiar rules are, some guideposts to meter your own activities and behavior, and some reassurance that you’re headed in the “right” direction, or at least one that makes sense to you.

But when it comes to comprehension, there’s more than just the instructive side of the equation. There’s also understanding.

This is an important point, and one that I think needs some more elaboration and consideration.

The Case for Theory Before Practice

If school has taught us anything, it’s that there’s a use for having domain knowledge before practice begins. Just like we teach our kids (or try to), if something’s too hot to touch, there’s an effect from touching it regardless of cautions. Learning anything early that we can apply before negative happenstance can be helpful.

There’s also the possibility for analysis-in-the-moment, for anything we have knowledge of before practice. When something beneficial comes from what we might otherwise perceive as a negative action (for example, breaking up a flame war by making an explosive remark yourself), a theoretical understanding of human motivation and debate habits can be really helpful; with a theoretical knowledge to guide us, we might understand why that explosive comment worked to diffuse the situation, and another one might have made things worse.

The ability to understand the effects our actions might have can be hugely beneficial. The question is not whether theory has a place, but whether or not it should come first.

The Case for Practice Before Theory

In the Karate Kid, when Ralph Macchio is being taught to wax cars and paint fences, he spends a lot of time being annoyed that he’s not really learning karate. His sensei, Mr Miagi, smiles and fails to explain until much later. After weeks of labour and practice, finally the lesson becomes clear; the Kid was building muscle memory for the activities relevant to his required expertise.

Of course once the purpose of the practice is explained, there’s a blossoming of understanding. Having the muscle memory for the work that needs to be done makes the actual doing of the work so much easier. All that needs to be done in each instance is decide which skill to apply in which circumstance. This makes activity of any kind highly strategic – counter follows block follows jab and so forth. Natural progression and rhythm of action becomes easily apparent, for reasons entirely different to the in-the-moment analysis that those who learn theory before practice take advantage of.

But Which Should Come First?

And should it always be that way? Matt Ridings (@techguerilla) almost immediately responded with a question about why linear thought about theory and practice were such a big deal. It’s a good question; not everyone needs the muscle memory that comes from preemptive practice, and not everyone else can apply theory to their initial exploration of a task or domain.

I think there’s a case to be made for both directions, but it’s a case that has to be made on a per-instance basis. Some of us are polymaths, able to learn a huge variety of things easily. Some of us are intuitive learners, others kinesthetic. There is a huge variety of learning style out there – and it’s on the teachers, the instructors… The sensei among us to look for the signs that a student (hello, fellow grasshopper) can benefit better from one style of teaching than they can from another.

Before we can decide which style of teaching to employ, however, we need to define our theory. That, I think, goes far beyond just deciding who learns what better in what form.

Me? I’m going to do some more study. I’ve spent the last year playing karate kid – and I know, from how the year turned out, that I need more of that. My muscle memory isn’t as strong as it should be in some areas. However, I know I can’t survive on practice alone. Part of my work this year, I think, will be building some core theories out of observations of my own habits, and tending to the things that have succeeded.

What do you think? Where are you on the scale of theory vs practice?

Image by Woodley Wonderworks.

Outgrowing Your Skin – The Metahuman

December 16, 2009 by Ian 1 Comment

One of the qualities of the metahuman is the ability we have to be bigger than ourselves.

The super connected now have the ability to gather together any information they quest for from any number of resources. Those of us who navigate the flow can pull literally any trade out of our collective butts and make comments – whether useful or not – on just about anything with no more than thirty seconds and a mobile phone. An example of this? Earlier tonight, I helped @socialnerdia on Twitter with a question about computers. I happen to know a few just-above-entry-level facts about the differences between 32- and 64-bit computers, so I shared.

Shared. Didn’t sell. That’s not how I roll.

This is one of the reasons I love the proclivity of these networks. Tools like Buzzom let me rake in people at random, my process with Twitter itself lets me weed out the useless ones, and applications like TweetDeck then let me help out wherever I can, whenever I have the four seconds it took me to write a response – and then I can share it with you because Bettween exists. The entire process took less time than getting up for something to drink, but suddenly I feel like it’s all worth it.

Just like writing here. Finding examples like this keep me writing. Sharing what we know is a big deal – we may not all want to be educators, but everyone likes an opportunity to teach now and then. It helps to be an interesting person because, after all, the trick of the universally interesting is to be universally interested.

I would never have had the opportunity to do half of what I do if I weren’t well on my way to outgrowing my skin. Pay attention to what you’re doing online, specifically because chances are you could be doing something better with your time.

You don’t have to be one dimensional,in fact you’ll suffer if you are, but you do have to be about something. Me? I’m about connections. Not just networks and groups, I see links between everything. It helps being an animist, of course, but it’s not necessary. However, because I’m aware of this trait of mine, I foster it, apply it to everything I do, and try to make the most of my primary talent as a specialty in a world where generalisation is necessary.

Have you figured out your angle on life yet? Better still, are you making use of it in a generous fashion?

Personal Branding vs Brand Democratisation

December 3, 2009 by Ian Leave a Comment

: photo by Kane

Every time I hear the intro for the Six Pixels of Separation podcast (I’m that other listener), I hear Mitch Joel‘s voice rather reedily commenting on how “Consumers have never been so powerful” and making the note about how brand democratisation is a pre-eminent force in commerce these days.

Think about that for a second, and put it in the perspective of other marketing bloggers talking about personal branding. Did you think they were talking about the same thing? For a while I did, but there’s a missing step here.

When Mitch talks about brand democratisation, I take it to mean the efforts that large corporations undertake to involve people with their branding, the community essence that is becoming so popularised thanks to the internet. How brands are taking advantage of Facebook pages, and what that means for the 350 or more million users. It also brings me to his own devil’s advocate position about the jump that people have in a lot of cases not yet made in recognizing the difference between collection and engagement. When brands, companies, engage in these kinds of shifts toward democratically developed business which is at the end more profitable and more beneficial to all parties. It’s a full-win situation.

But where does personal branding fit into this?

Over the last week, I’ve been watching the fallout of Chris Brogan’s Timberland rant. From the comments on his own blog post, to the reactions of others – Chris’ own admission of spazz and Justin Kownacki’s deconstruction of the situation come to mind – and the best part of it comes from the latter post, where Justin says “Online, everyone is an axe murderer.”

The short of this argument is that with the tools we as individual people have at our disposal, it’s possible for everyone to reach massive plateaus of celebrity in whatever circle we travel, if we do a good enough job of creating our own brand, controlling our presence, we can become hyper visible to whatever democratised brand we wish to engage. We can act as the spearhead for our followers to take action and become catalysts for change. It doesn’t mean we all get to be one-blog lobbyists, but it does mean that with enough care and feeding of our communities – both those we take part in and those we create – we can begin asking them for backup in our own endeavours.

It’s worth noting that it becomes very easy to fall into the trap of believing your own press. As Brogan says in his mea culpa about the Timberland post:

We talk about how individuals can earn trust and build reputation, but it never occurred to me that people might see others (me) as a trust agent in most things.

What Chris is getting at here more specifically is that we (those of us who are building and fostering community and networks) have to be wary of our own effects on the web we build. Spiders with heavy feet don’t catch many flies once they’ve ripped their nets. If you’re building your personal brand with anything in mind, any aim other than to get yourself out there and establish who you are online, eventually you’ll hit a crossroads like Chris’. Which direction will you go? Will you have caution and stray on the side of silence? Or will you err on the side of veneficus vox and ask too much of your community?

And, out of curiosity, what would you say Chris did by voicing his troubles? Or about the method by which he responded, not just to the criticism, but the constructive and informative mea culpa? Has Brogan jumped the shark, or has he done exactly what this new system of democratisation and personal branding is set up to address: called out a problem and received an appropriate, if ad hoc, response?

Corporate brands, democratic brands, and personal brands are very different, but the differences between these concepts are becoming an integral part of how the individual can interact on a new plane with a business. Each of the three have authority for different reasons, and authority must be earned; it can never be out and out claimed.

Who do you give the benefit of authority to? How much time to you spend considering why?

Caveat Lector.

The Album People vs The Radio People

December 2, 2009 by Ian Leave a Comment

Which would you rather listen to? Radio, or a CD? Sounds like an easy question, but it’s not. Like all questions of preference, nuance and reason are more important than answer.

Way back when the iPod Shuffle came out, some colleagues and I were trying to figure out who would buy them. No screen, limited space, limited controls. Five generations of iPod and they’re still around, as are any other number of cutrate mp3 players and digital audio devices. But who buys them?

It comes down to Albums versus Radio.

We figured that there’s an element of build-in serendipity with Shuffles and other screenless players that’s very like the radio. You hit play, it shuffles, and there’s something new every time. You hand over control to the machine and go from there.

Screened audio players have the same function, but we noticed it got used a lot less often. This is why we figured album people liked them – when you buy a CD, you get the track list, there are liner notes. You’re in control of what you hear and when, because you can navigate. It’s not a rejection of serendipity, but it is to an extent an exertion of control over a set medium.

Sort of an interesting correlation, I think. Lots of people make the choice to allow for more or less serendipity and surprise in their lives. Why should music be any exception to the rule?

Which do you figure you are? An album, or a radio person?

The Reversal of Disclosure

November 30, 2009 by Ian Leave a Comment

: photo by NJ Scott

Back in the day, businesses had secrets. So did you, but yours were a lot less fun to expose. And then the internet came about, and very swiftly, it became impossible for businesses to keep their secrets. Which, naturally, means that everyone feels like spilling theirs. And, as is the case for every first-run test, everyone did it poorly.

I had a blog. Actually, a LiveJournal. Those were the days. Plastering my mood, whatever music I was listening to, and whatever I was thinking all over the web. I didn’t care because no one else did, it was the Summer of Ones and Zeroes. Privacy was gone in its traditional sense, and instead I got to hide behind any of nearly fifty screen names I once kept active, secure in the belief that anyone digging for my indiscretion would surely be foiled by the sheer amount of other noise that sounded exactly like me all over the web. I spent nearly ten years keeping myself hidden in the murk behind cascades of creative pronouns and the use of everyone else’s screen names in public. It was geek subculture at its finest.

Naturally, it all came crashing down. Just as the eighties had killed the buzz left by the sixties, the Summer of Ones and Zeroes fled under the sheer dominating weight of the Digital Millennium.

I remember the first time I heard of someone getting fired for their blog. They had written a scathing commentary on inter-office politics on LiveJournal and hit the publish button without ticking the box that said “Friends Only” – ruining a career in thirty seconds.Forgot to replace his boss’s name with the usual pseudonym, which was similarly unflattering and appeared on a few hundred angered entries.

Back then (read as about eight years ago) no one had any idea of exactly how permanent the net was. Once a post disappeared from the first page of your blog, it kind of disappeared forever into the mists of the backdated entries, and not too many of us thought much about the repercussions of our actions.

Businesses didn’t seem to have the same problem, really. They always had secrets, but they in general had the know-how to keep them, or at least do something constructive with their disclosure. The common practice of stamping everything with Trade Secret and litigating the snot out of passers-by who meddled was in full effect. What happened to that? Just like with my friend who lost his job, the internet happened. Leaks develop, and the magnifying capability of the Great Index in the Clouds makes it nigh impossible to hide certain things.

Now, however, something even curiouser is happening. Companies have blogs. Company representatives have blogs, about their industry and their businesses. Public personalities are enhancing business in a massive way, turning multinational corporations into the friendly Mom and Pop stores of old – it’s a wonderful phenomenon, even ig it is a bit disconcerting.

Everyone has the capability of becoming a respected publisher. The Huffington Post is overtaking newspapers. Twitter scooped CNN this time last year. And seemingly without a gun to their heads, the small fry are all changing their focus. The purely personal blog is disappearing., slowly but surely.

The personal blog is getting censored by its writer, and being slowly replaced by professional blogs. Even me. I haven’t written a personal update in months, and I find I’m getting a lot more even just in the doing of writing about productive things instead. It feels sort of like if I were Henry Rollins, suddenly becoming an investigative journalist at times. But it’s an interesting experience to take note of, this change from the geeky rant to the respectable practice.

It feels like the internet just left its screaming childhood and is finally going to college. I wonder what it’s majoring in?