How many barriers are there between us right now?
Just one – a little button that says publish – that’s it. It’s simple. It’s insanely efficient.
What about for your company? How many barriers exist between you and your customers? Probably many – lawyers, supervisors, departments, consultants, procedures, forms – all of these things are artificial barriers.
Artificial barriers:
- Are expensive
- Slow the process to a crawl
- Kill creativity
- Water down ideas
- Destroy efficiency
- Make you late to the party
The web has destroyed the physical barriers.
So why are you keeping the artificial?
You can’t win in the ultra-competitive attention economy against a world of nimble, smart content creators who know the tools intimately and are incredibly good (and getting better every day) at creating things that spread. Not if you sound like a warmed-over press release because your content has been removed of personality by filters with the unspoken purpose of risk-aversion.
It is actually riskier to “play it safe” because you risk not being heard at all and lost in the oceans of information our world is perpetually publishing.
Don’t believe me?
Go look at the content on PR Web or Business Wire. Nearly everything published there is unreadable. The honest truth is the content there is tiresome, boring and not even scanable. These are communications still being created for a pre-internet age. Who are we kidding?
All of that material has gone through layers of artificial barriers and filters. They strip away the sharpness, edge and creativity of the content.
What if you removed the inefficiencies and superfluous layers and put a few smart, web savvy, highly trusted people out front to communicate your business with the world in a multi-directional format without oversight? Let them loose and give them carte blanche to use all the new tools to build real value. Let them communicate honestly without removing the personality and character that make your brand special. Let them format it in creative ways to keep attention. Let them create things that will actually move people emotionally.
Small companies or underdogs take note, it has never been easier to run circles around the 800 pound gorilla if you are organized for it. Nimble companies have always had the advantage over slow-moving, but the web has enabled this to a tremendous degree.
The gap between nimble and slow has become too great to ignore. Destroying the artificial barriers in a world with no physical barriers frees you in a way which is highly disruptive to competitors who can’t let go.