You should probably try it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason you\u2019re unsure.\u00a0 Perhaps you\u2019re unsure because it involves taking a chance or you don\u2019t think it\u2019s perfect.\u00a0 Yet the ideas \u2013 especially the creative variety \u2013 that you\u2019re unsure about are probably the most interesting.\u00a0 They\u2019re also probably interesting because they are imperfect.<\/p>\n
Perfection isn\u2019t as pleasing to us as imperfection because it\u2019s not natural.\u00a0 This is where so many get the web wrong:\u00a0 ideas which are overly polished don\u2019t resonate with people, they resonate with marketers.<\/p>\n
To those who might say \u201cI\u2019m unsure about my idea,\u00a0what if\u00a0I fail?\u201d I\u2019d respond with: \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with that?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the greatest things about being a marketer these days is the cost of failure.\u00a0 If you\u2019re\u00a0organized for failure, something the internet enables, you can fail like crazy \u2013 cheaply or even free \u2013 until you find what works.\u00a0 Most people try to perfect every little thing that is shared with the world because it used to be costly to launch.\u00a0 But as Eric Friedman sagely advises:\u00a0\u00a0never launch, just iterate:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen did Google launch?\u201d<\/p>\n The answer is that they never officially \u201claunched\u201d. Sure they opened up the product to a larger sample, but from the first index of sites, to the next 100,000, to the next 1,000,000 then just kept having people use the product. They outgrew their servers and office space and continued to grow the product. They iterated along the way and used the crawling of the web as a catalyst for growth and adding new hardware.<\/p>\n This has resonated with me and gives an important lesson;\u00a0never launch, just iterate.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Why should this be just for startups?\u00a0 Apply this to your marketing, your\u00a0blogging, your website, your\u00a0social media\u00a0participation, your PR, or any of your outreach to spread ideas.\u00a0 Businesses, artists and everyone in between should think like this.<\/p>\n The \u201cbig win\u201d as a bump in buzz\/digital PR\u00a0no longer happens at the start.\u00a0 It\u2019s been totally flipped \u2013 you have to earn enough\u00a0social proofing\u00a0to reach that tipping point.\u00a0 But a neat thing happens when you get to that point:\u00a0 you will rely less on pushing your ideas and more on an audience you\u2019ve built a relationship with to help spread them.<\/p>\n Pull PR\u00a0will shape your future public relations strategy, but only if you implement an incremental growth strategy, let go of \u201cbig wins\u201d or as Eric says:\u00a0 never launch, just iterate.\u00a0 When big wins happen, great \u2013 but the propensity for them to occur rises if you embrace a constant, iterative process and are always trying new things (building an audience along the way) versus spending inordinate amounts of time trying to craft hits.<\/p>\n Structure your marketing so the next time you\u2019re unsure about an idea, you get to test it in it\u2019s pure, unfinished form.\u00a0 Get your team into a system that is simple, friction free and with the approach there are no \u201cwrong answers.\u201d\u00a0 If you can\u2019t trust your team to do this, get them to the point you can.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a internet marketer by day, but I don\u2019t drink the kool aid \u2013 I\u2019m first a foremost a user of digital platforms and have been for more than a decade before I got into marketing.\u00a0 I live at that intersection and approach strategy from that vantage point.\u00a0 And that vantage point is to treat the web as if it is a constantly evolving experiment with no wrong answers.\u00a0 I\u00a0encourage you\u00a0to do the same.\u00a0 If you\u2019re working as a digital marketer and are worried about the risk to failure, you\u2019re not using the web properly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You should probably try it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason you\u2019re unsure.\u00a0 Perhaps you\u2019re unsure because it involves taking a chance or … <\/p>\n