How to avoid digital extermination?

It’s 1993. In the classic movie, Groundhog Day, when Bill Murray is woken up repeatedly at 06.00, his technology is a radio alarm, an electric razor and a decidedly un-flat TV. With the exception of his razor, TV weatherman Murray is very much unplugged. Fast-forward 20 years, and the first thing most of us reach for in the morning (not going there!) is a smart phone, tablet or laptop – all packing more processing power than Apollo 13! Partly we need to know what we’ve missed while we’ve slept. Partly we need to re-join our unceasing battle with incoming information; an attempt to manage the over-whelm that is 24/7 connectedness in search of the nirvana of ‘in-box zero’.

We can reflect with a degree of longing for Murray’s simple era of faxes, brick-size ‘cells’ and pay phones. Today, we live in the land of digital mayhem. and now have to overcome so much more noise even just to begin a business conversation. The challenge is how to make ourselves heard in a world that’s stopped listening and it’s not easy.

So how do we stop ourselves being metaphorically ‘exterminated’?

C21 Connection

At Thought Leaders, we reckon there are 3 things you need to do to ‘be’ to cut through – captured here in my model:

1. Relevant

Homer Simpson obvious? Perhaps. But so many of us forget to, first and foremost, be relevant. We need to establish why what we have to ‘say’ is a priority. If we are not positioning our message as an answer to some of our customers most pressing needs, we are simply swiped or key-pressed into digital oblivion. Just reflect on how you treat irrelevant or low priority traffic!

2. Meaningful

Once ‘in’, we have to deepen the connection. Most of us are hanging on by the skin or our teeth trying to manage the sea of information we receive each day. We are strongly drawn to people we trust, like or respect – those who can simplify the ‘noise’ and create meaning for us. It’s about empathy. In her wonderful blog ‘The Story of Telling’, Bernadette Jiwa recently wrote that ‘Whoever gets closest to their customer wins!’ She’s right and creating meaning is at the heart of it.

3. Engaging

‘Worthy’, ‘solid’, ‘academic’, ‘extensive’ or ‘robust’ alone won’t cut it – at least in terms of grabbing the scarce attention of people whose default is ‘NO!’ If you’re the Government proposing a new 20-year Defence Capability Policy for Australia you can do what you want. Suppliers will bend over backwards and wade through 800 pages of turgid prose all day. Most of us don’t have that luxury. Our communications – emails, presentations, webinars, workshops etc. have to first seek to engage. They can do this by ‘informing’, ‘inspiring’ and ‘entertaining’ our audience. Whatever the format - we have to earn the right to be heard.

A useful way to look at this is that we now have to think twice. Once about what we have to say (our message) and a second time about the best way to connect it (preference). Most businesses still don’t do this well, meaning there’s a ton of upside for those that do.

Love to know how you go.

Mark