This may be a controversial statement, but I believe it to be true:

The best digital communications strategy is to learn how to not be strategizing so much.

It connects us back to the ‘be authentically transparent’ concept, the ‘interact like humans’ concept, all the various statements that are so hard to quantify.

What I mean is, when we engage in communication with another person, be it for personal or professional reasons, and we are ‘in the moment’, responding naturally and genuinely and listening to what the other person is saying rather than just waiting to talk, conversations take on a natural flow and rhythm that we don’t even notice as something special other than “that was a nice conversation”.

Inversely, when we are always thinking of the ‘most appropriate’ way to respond, when we ‘dont want to hurt someones feelings’, when we “think about” the “best thing to say” before we say it, we are up in our heads, making all kinds of assumptions about probable outcomes, filtering through a usually inaccurate and limiting sense of who we think we are as individuals, and viewing the world through an ‘us vs them’ filter.

This leads to unengaging and disconnected conversations, be it with a coworker, as a business or with a girlfriend.  Even if people can’t quite put their finger on it, something feels off about the conversation, and they most likely wont remember it that fondly.

This is not our fault of course.  We are trained in business school that ‘those people out there’ are a demographic to be targeted.  We are trained by our own minds not to trust our instincts, no matter how much “go with your gut” lessons we learn.  We want to be safe. We want to plan for every contingency.

The thing about contingency planning is that the element of spontaneity that drives memorable interactions gets lost, and people feel as if they’re being treated generically rather than personally.

So I urge you (and I say this as someone with Communications Strategist on my business card): Whenever possible, don’t strategize.  Just do it.

Am I wrong?

I’m SO sick of the phrase “Social Media”  It ghettoizes what is essentially human-to-human interaction into some kind of line item on a marketing plan.

Using Twitter isn’t about 140 characters.  It’s about companies saying “We’re here to help, what can we do” and putting someone in charge of helping.

A Facebook page isn’t about having a convenient place to push the RSS feed of your press releases.  It’s about saying “Here’s a place where we can all come together, share our experiences” and connect with other people who are into the same thing.”

A blog isn’t a place to show how smart your people are and how awesome your company is.  It’s about “Here’s what we’re thinking, tell us what you think.”

“How can we best strategize our tactical efforts to maximize ROI” is a damned copout.  Forget all you know about how you think you need to talk to people at your job, and start talking to the public like you talk to people you like. Everyone who would be interested in what you have to say online is already your friend.  If you can’t do it, you’d better hire someone who can.  Then talk to me about ROI.

Selling stuff isn’t your goal.  Connecting with people is your goal.  Selling stuff is a result of connecting to the point where people would feel bad for NOT buying your stuff.

The information age is about crumbling the pillars of faceless corporate messaging and revealing the people inside who want to talk.

Let’s not reduce an idea as transformational, uniquely of our time and essential to the future as this to the meaningless bland corporate speak of “Social Media” any more.

Just stop.

Please.

Rant over.

In communications, there are those who think strategically and those who think tactically.  At my job, we’ve even named our blog Thinkers and Doers to reflect both sides of the coin.  Ideally, both sides inform the other.  No tactic lives out there on its own (“We need to have a Twitter account because people are talking about twitter!”) without some kind of strategy (or valuable reason for existing behind it).  In the same way, having a clever strategy without any specific toolsets identified can languish in ‘thought leadership land’.

Historically, many companies have focused on a ‘message’ as the core unit of visibility.  “Just Do It” is a message. “Made From The Best Stuff On Earth” is a message.

Those are all well and good (and have had their time), but these days the opportunities for telling a story are vast.  “Just Do It” may not have any meaning on its own (aside from “I know that, thats the Nike tagline”), but pair it with images of Michael Jordan dunking from the free throw line with room to spare, or Tiger Woods—well, maybe that’s a bad example. I would argue that its the story behind the message that has caused “Just Do It” to remain in the cultural lexicon.

The great thing for business is that the internet has opened up an almost infinite opportunity to tell stories to deepen the experience that a person has with a brand. Through the use of video, podcasts, blogs, conversations, and especially by empowering and encouraging those who are already on board to be a part of the storytelling process on behalf of your brand, you have the opportunity to build a story ecosystem for very little cost beyond earning the trust of your customers online through real interactions.

Just imagine the possibilities, of what you could do with that kind of evangelical content, coming from people with no financial stake, just out of love for some aspect of what you do. Just imagine what message that would send to people who could potentially be interested in your product, service, campaign, charity, country.

Just do it.

There is so much that we all take for granted when going through life.

One of the biggest assumptions that I have gotten caught in historically (and that I see a lot of people caught in) is the assumption that for any given situation, all you have to work with is you and the situation.  If you can’t change the situation (which mostly you can’t, not directly anyway), and you can’t (or won’t)  change yourself, you’re stuck and screwed.

If you’re unemployed, and you can’t seem to find a job, you may become more and more frustrated as you focus on the ‘got to find a job got to find a job got to find a job’, leading to less and less success: You are annoyed, you take that energy in with you to job interviews, it comes across in your interaction even if you try to hide it, you dont get the job, you get more frustrated, and on and on.  Even if you get a job at that point, would you be happy about it? Probably not, with all that energy built up!

If you’re a business, and you are used to marketing through the use of big splashy events and Superbowl commercials rather than providing experiences that surprise and delight your customers, and suddenly your revenues are slipping and you can’t see why, so you keep doing what you’re doing to try to affect the marketplace and make them buy more of your product, spending tons of money on a new campaign with a celebrity saying how awesome your product is, and your share of the market continues to dwindle so you fire your PR people and demand a launch event that will go viral and spread across the internet and whatever Twitter is, and on and on.

The reality of the situation (and something that I don’t think gets taught to us at any point in most of our development) is that there is actually a third element within any situation: the relationship between us and the thing in question.  The relationship is something that we always have the ability to look at and adjust.  We can focus our attention at our relationship to our not having found a job, and choose whether to remain frustrated, or tune it so that our relationship is one that is more calm, accepting “I have not found employment yet, and that is okay, because it does not mean that I will never find employment”, and ultimately useful.

We often don’t get a chance to look at situations like this, though, since we are usually very quick to respond to a situation directly.  The most important thing to take from this, and something I struggle with but am learning, is to slow down and pause before reacting.  Take a second to look at your relationship to the situation rather than just focusing on the situation itself.  Is an advertising campaign the best way to reach customers? Is frustration the best way to deal with your employment situation?  Probably not, but until we learn to take a look at that third thing, we will be stuck there.

So, where are you stuck on things 1 and 2, where looking at the third thing might be useful?

Often, we keep ourselves from trying new things, going out on a limb, or putting ourselves out there by focusing on the worst possible outcome.

“Oh, I could never ask him out, what if he says no and laughs at me?”

“We aren’t ready to have a Twitter account for our business, what if people say bad things about our products?”

“I can’t meet with the Dalai Lama because China would get pissed off.”

The thing of it is that we can’t predict the future.  Our minds close us off to new experiences (by predicting disaster) in order to keep things as they are, but things are always changing.

Therefore, if we can’t predict the future anyway, why not try flipping the script a little to keep things in perspective.

Next time, just as an exercise, try asking yourself “What’s the best that could happen?”  What could be the best possible outcome for asking out that guy, or creating that facebook page for your business, or meeting with whomever, or going to that party, or taking that chance.

Everything is always changing.  If you think of things in a positive way instead of a negative way, who knows what could happen. Do a reward analysis, not just a risk one!