Marketing in the Recommendation Age.
You must be different to sell your writing.
You must stand out to be a successful author.
You must be audacious.
You must have something to say in order to write to earn.
And you must encapsulate it into an idea virus in order to successfully sell your writing.
We all have something to say…the problem is only a select few will have the opportunity to be heard. And never has this been more evident than in the new era of content delivery that we now live in.
The term Recommendation Age was probably first coined by Chris Anderson in his book, The Long Tail, and it aptly fits this present age.
In an era when we are simply bombarded with too many messages, our subconscious minds word hard to prevent us from feeling overwhelmed. To do this, we subconsciously filter everything we hear from a pre-existing story that we have about any given idea.
So how do we bypass this natural resistance, the strength of which lies outside of our conscious existence?
We must reframe what we do to enable our target market to hear us.
The psychology of reframing is crucial in order for you to create an idea virus.
Let me give you an example of reframing.
On Sunday, I was at one of our boys’ travel basketball tournaments.
It was half time and I felt an urge to make a trip to the men’s room.
(It was one of those urges that you have after a couple of star bucks coffees and two bottles of water—in other words, it was not going to be a quick trip!)
While standing at a urinal in the washroom of a school built back in 1924, I couldn’t help but notice some graffiti that was written above the porcelain friend I stood before.
On the wall were written the words by Albert Einstein himself. (Well, I doubt that he actually wrote the very words that I saw…but they certainly have been attributed to him.)
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
–Albert Einstein
I couldn’t help but strongly agree with the transcriber who wrote this using the real estate that I happened to be viewing at that time–the wall in front of me!
And that brings up an important concept around the science of reframing in the Recommendation Age in order to create an idea virus.
Normally, when I stand in a high school washroom, I am usually reminded of a different form of the english language that I don’t see in public libraries or witness while sitting in the pew of my church! In fact, the washroom environment is a perfect metaphor for the visual that I have of this form of literature!
So to see something that I would expect to read about in a library left a lasting impression on my mind…and it left me with the desire to share this with you.
The science of reframing is your ability to use a situation or an object as a teaching tool. Reframing is best done thru the ‘suspension of disbelief’ or as I used to call them when I was in education, ‘discrepant events.’ Discrepant events are situations that occur that leave the viewer puzzled because what one expects to happen, the converse or opposite happens.
This was the experience I had in the boys’ washroom. I had pre-programmed my mind to experience a debased form of literature, and instead was shocked to find a quote attributed to Einstein. In other words, I experienced a powerful example reframing!
Right now I want you to understand two important concepts around reframing an idea to make it stick in an over-communicated world.
In order to use the psychology of reframing, you must understand the science of pedagogy (the science of teaching and learning).
Both of these concepts are the result of you developing the skill of self reflection. One of our legacy building concepts found in our new book, Author And Grow Rich, due out in two weeks is the concept that “he/she who self reflects the greatest leaves the most powerful legacy.”
Self reflection is critical and the quote by Einstein jogged my mind around these two concepts.
The first word I want you to record right now is the term, “assimilation.”
In the science of pedagogy (teaching/learning) it is important to have a system of how you understand the world around you so that you can use this understanding to filter all the information that you take in. To assimilate means to apply new ideas into your pre-existing frame-work so that your system for analyzing the world around you is more reflective of what and how other people are seeing their physical environments.
The other word is “accommodation.” This word is also very important in the science of pedagogy. The concept behind this word involves your ability to let ideas transform your system into something that is better substantiated by other people’s perceptions. In other words, the framework by which you analyze the world as an entrepreneur should be open to modifications.
And thank brings me back to my time at the urinal at St Pat’s High School.
Because I had Author And Grow Rich on my mind, my subconscious was open to a quote that impacts the fundamentals of sound pedagogy.
I want to challenge you to increase your own curiosity about the world around you.
The single most powerful way to increase your curiosity is to self reflect on your experiences. And the best way to self reflect on your experiences is to write about them.
Writing is the doing part of thinking.
And it is the venue to become a successful author.
In my next post I will discuss with you how to reframe an idea into something worthy of an ‘idea virus’ using three powerful techniques to help you analyze your idea.
