_____________________________________
Guest Post by Danny Quick on MediumThe new scarcity for the world at large is creativity and innovation. The new scarcity for those creating and innovating, is attention. I use those two words synonymously, since innovating involves the act of creating.While the “industrial world” valued maximizing known processes, the “networked world” values creating better processes. That’s actually the correct way to think about technology permeating our lives. “Technology” is, at its core, just a better way of doing things.“What is technology? It’s technique. It’s the way we all do things. And when you discover a new way to do things, its value is multiplied by all the people who use it. It is the proverbial fishing rod, rather than the fish.” — Paul GrahamThere is a saying that a company will “build for what the CEO measures.” Henry Miller put it more eloquently when he said, “I have to be careful of what I dream, since for me, between dream and reality there is only the thinnest veil.” Whether referring to professional or personal aspirations, the point remains. You usually get what you aim for, so sharpen your sights carefully.Most creators are measuring the wrong things, and as a result, building for the wrong future. The number one mistake is measuring only “top line awareness.” Knowing how many people visited your site or streamed your song is not a great indicator of whether you’re going to thrive in this new world.The proper thing for a creator to measure, and to build for, is the lifetime value of their community. But it’s honestly not that simple. Top line awareness is still a critical piece of the equation.And if you’ve been paying attention, these rules don’t only apply to aspiring creatives, it’s now how you market anything. Enter the Paradox of Awareness.
The Paradox of Awareness is a term I made up to describe this unique situation. It states that:
To grow your community, you must be an early adopter of amplification platforms. But these platforms are a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Let me explain. “Attention is the new scarcity,” it’s actually a subset of the ultimate scarcity, time. While it’s going to take a time investment to do anything worthwhile, where and how you spend that time makes all the difference.
Just as an early stage investor gets a higher return because they took on more risk, you as a creator need to be an early adopter of amplification platforms for the disproportionate return you get on your time investment.
There is a adoption cycle to everything. It gives you an opportunity to invest heavily early on, then things get crowded and the same amount of effort does not yield the same results. It happens everyday.
“As a technology start up, from the day you start until your last breath, you will be in a furious race against time… At Netscape, we went public when we were 15 months old. Had we started six months later, we would have been late to a market with 37 other browser companies.” — Ben Horowitz
Tracy DiNunzio over indexed on Twitter early to help build her community and grow her start up, Tradesy. If she put in the exact same amount of work on Twitter today, the results would be astronomically lower. She would be late to the game.
These platforms provide the first interaction, which is critical. But it’s only step one. Your “loyal” Instagram followers will be onto SnapChat next year. You can guarantee there is another social amplification platform coming down the pipeline right after SnapChat. In this constantly shifting climate, what do you measure?
Toyota used to define success as, “controlling your own destiny.” This may strike some as a weird analogy to compare a creator to a car company. If so, you should do your homework. The way you control your own destiny is having the resources to operate on your terms, whatever that means for you.
While you should be building a following on these platforms based on Free, you also need to be thinking about building deeper relationships all along the way. It’s not how many people consume your content, it’s how deeply they engage and how often they come back in the future.
Related articles
