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In my last article, Setting a Tone I rambled a bit on the idea that there is so much information out there that people are looking for more than just content, they want to read about an experience.
Setting a tone, as stated in an earlier article is “looking look into the future and working toward a change which will really add value. It is all about transparency and communicating an experience that gets people’s attention. The best way to do this is to describe an action that you have personally experienced. I keep reflecting on this topic, because it works if you really set your mind to it and try thinking differently.
Continuing to Set a Tone
This topic keeps playing over and over in my head. Too many people are fixated on information and are missing the experience. It happened again with my kids. I saw a motorcycle going extremely fast, 75-80 in a 45 mph zone. I asked my kids if they saw and heard the motorcycle go by. They both looked up from their smartphones and said, no – I was sending a text to my friends.
This is the type of world we live in. Many of us marketers are trying to create videos, quality content, images and other material in various digital and traditional markets. We work hard on these projects, but we need to understand there really aren’t any guarantees.
Take a Step Back and Reconnect
We need to take a step back and think hard about our connections. Going back to the kid example, I would say I know my kids pretty well. Just as marketers would say that they know their clients. The fact is, we are slowly losing clients to the abundant distractions in the world. My kids find texting their friends more important than their surroundings. I should have set the tone and told my kids to stop what they are doing and check out the motorcycle passing us at a ridiculous speed. I want my kids to know that type of driving is unacceptable and very dangerous. I am not sure talking about this event after the fact had the same meaning.
Yesterday, one of my professional contacts had a question about Linkedin. My day was full of meetings, calls and to-do’s but the two of us started a conversation on Twitter, email and Linkedin and were able to find a solution. Never, once did we pick up the phone and just talk to each other. It wasn’t that we couldn’t, it was more a matter of trying to communicate as best as we could under the circumstances. (I think this type of connecting is needed more and more) We need to set a tone that we will connect with people we want to do business with and stay connected to for future growth. It is a matter of changing and communicating an experience effectively.
Time for a New Direction
While the marketing world is still focused on the need for social media and content marketing to be adopted, I think it is time to look at a new direction. It is time for tone marketing to be more adopted. We need to find ways to connect these channels with our clients and create a better experience. The way people search for information is changing. Information overload is here. It is time to go back to our clients and build on those relationships both internally with our company teams and externally with people who are looking for ways to grow their own businesses. Look at the definitions of tone and engage
tone – a particular quality, way of sounding, modulation, or intonation of the voice as expressive of some meaning, feeling, spirit, etc.:a tone of command. Source Dictionary.com
engage – to occupy the attention or efforts of (a person or persons) Source Dictionary.com
Tone looks at communicating and connecting with a particular quality of sound. I think this word has been missing over the past few years. Engaging sounds nice, but it doesn’t really tell us “how” to do it. Also, do we really want to engage with every person we come in contact with?
Setting a tone is taking our current channels and raising them to a new level to hopefully create an experience that people remember. We need to put the old way of thinking behind us.
OLD Thinking: Write content that is searchable and creates information and facts for people to read and act on. This type of connecting is quickly disappearing because we are having a hard time getting on people’s radar.
NEW Thinking: Taking content, words, pictures and video and create an experience, (tone) that people will recognize amidst all of the information and news. Something different!
Setting a tone is the future. More work needs to be done in this area and I am simply scratching the surface myself.
What are your thoughts?
photo credit: Chema Concellon via photopin cc
