Marketing According to Tolkien

I originally called this post “Writing and Weaving Your Marketing Bridge,” because that follows the theme of several of my posts so far during this 30 day blogging challenge.  Instead, I want to give credit to the source of my inspiration. This is also a post in the occasional series “Wisdom from unexpected places.”

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s  The Lord of the Rings Trilogy,  one of my favorite sections is in Volume 1, of the Fellowship’s visit to Lothlorien, the treacherous land of the elves, under the care and protection of the Lady Galadriel.

To get there, the men, hobbits, and a dwarf (along with the elf in the Fellowship) must cross a cold and rushing river on two strands of hithlain, the uncanny strong rope woven from all that is beautiful and loved by the elves.

Not sure I could have done it! But picture that bridge of two thin ropes, seeming not much stronger than a spider’s gossamer, created with the immense love reflected in the quote below.

More wisdom from unexpected places, something I want to share from this book. Consider this quote, spoken of the elvish cloaks, gifts to the Fellowship travelers, “Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”

That is what to aim for, writing and weaving your heart and light into the message that will make the connection between your creation and your community. It may be as thin as the elvish rope, but it is made strong from the essence of your heart woven into the words.

That’s marketing, and it’s using words to weave the bridge out of all that you love. It’s at the heart of Write Synergies: The Words that Bring Heart to Your Marketing and Soul to Your Business. These are the Write Synergies you need to generate results, (communications, connections) greater than the sum of the parts.

Wouldn’t writing from the heart be helpful here with this marketing task? And is there a way to make writing bigger, expansive enough to encompass these Cs?

*Your Creation
*Your Commitment
*Your Community
*Your Connections
*Your Communications
*Your Content

Is there a way to  put some juice into the words, to get results that are bigger than just word + word, greater than the sum of the parts?

Tomorrow: You do what you do, you do what is yours to do. But how do you put your particular gifts and magic and greatness into the words to build that bridge?

Embrace Your Marketing Mindset (4Cs)

“I’d really rather just be doing the work that is mine to do, practicing my art or craft or therapy or career or profession. What is all this about marketing?!”

I’ve heard variations on this phrase for years — starting with the authors I worked with at the publishing company that employed me. They saw marketing, at best, as a necessary evil.

Now that I’m a free agent, hiring out to write and market and coach and strategize with and for my clients, I regularly come across writers, artists, healers, coaches, therapists, designers, attorneys, entrepreneurs, and even bankers who deeply dislike (hate?!) marketing. They see it, at best, as a necessary evil.

These are perfectly capable people who seem baffled when it comes to marketing. They tap fearfully into the seemingly endless supply of  variations on “marketing.” There’s corporate marketing, database marketing, SEO marketing, LOA marketing, internet marketing, social media marketing, MBA marketing, marketing trends, marketing research, marketing segmentation, branding, Superbowl marketing, direct response marketing, B-to-B marketing, B-to-C marketing, and we haven’t even touched advertising or PR, which might be included if you talk about integrated marketing or its longer-winded cousin, integrated marketing communications.

Are you intimidated yet? Are your palms sweating? Is fight or flight kicking in? Maybe this is why you hate marketing. Where are you in all this foreign-sounding gibberish? Where is your heart? Where is your gift? Where, even, are your people?

At the most fundamental level, for Conscious Creators, soul-preneurs, world-changers, visionaries, healers, and others in the soft sell marketing community, it really is all about your people. It’s about you and your community and connecting the two. We can talk about marketing without even going past the letter “C.”

Marketing is all about your Community. You can call it your circle, your clients, your customers, or even your audience. You can even go past “C” and call it your tribe. It’s all about your people. Well, what about them?

Marketing is all about Connecting. Connecting is a two-way process. You connect with them, and they connect with you.  How do you connect? From my perspective as The Write Synergies Guru, I’m partial to making the connections via words.

But connections come in every sensory variety. Music connects. Visuals connect. Paintings. Sculpture. Movies. Architecture. Movement connects. The healing touch of massage therapy connects. Even the tantalizing smells from your local cafe-bakery make a connection.

Marketing = Connecting + Communicating. So you make this connection, and from this connection you communicate. As with connecting, above, all your senses have their ways of communicating. But unless you’re right in front of the bakery or the painting or on the massage chair, the actual connection is tough to maintain. Distance isn’t a friend for these ways of communicating.

That’s why words as a medium (though imperfect) can paint the sensory details in a way that makes the communications possible over long distances and across time and space. Words can connect. Words can bring alive the connections across the world.

Words may be stories (Jeanne Kolenda is a master at stories with a purpose.) or metaphors. Words may be how-to or checklists. Words make up the books, the info products, the blog posts, web sites, brochures, business cards, press releases and even the 140 character tweets that are the currency of our communications.

Words weave the background texts of our lives. Words, both spoken and written, are how we communicate!

You mean marketing is just about talking to people? In the broadest sense, yes. That’s exactly what marketing is.

Connect with your Community by Communicating your Content. We prefer, all things being equal, to do business with people we know, like, and trust. How, in this digital marketplace, do we learn to know, like, and trust strangers?

The bakery cannot communicate its smell across the city to connect with bread-lovers in another neighborhood. But our words, imbued with meaning, with the content of our expertise, shared appropriately and clearly, focused on helping our people address whatever issue they face, packaged in a way to be useful, our words can communicate valuable content.

Marketing is that remarkable bridge, weaving together you, your heart, your creation. It weaves these “Cs” of Community, Connection, Communication, and Content into your message and beams it to your people in a way that they can hear it, can take it in, can process it. Suddenly the two-way span back and forth across your bridge is open.

They walk across the bridge to you. You meet them on this bridge constructed out of words that communicate your content and connect with your community.

Content Plus Community Blog Challenge Post 15

In Connie Ragan Green’s 30-day blog challenge, the level of commitment, knowledge, and overall good vibes of all the participants  is simply stunning. So much so that I have created a new category of links on my sidebar. Check out the “Tips from my Colleagues” on the sidebar. You’ll find links to specific articles overflowing with insights and practical tools and tips. It’s an ongoing project, so check back regularly.

To connect with me on Twitter:

@bobbyemiddendor

From the river of Tweets earlier this week, I came across this message from @iandavidchapman who retweeted from @problogger 140 Characters and the Swing to Longer Form Content
My take on the conversation: Community+Content=Twitter&FB+blog.  The basis for an online business is community plus content. And yes, content may also include products, either our own or affiliates, and ideally both. Actually community plus content isn’t a bad model for non-virtual businesses as well: The “content” is your expertise about the products and services offered.

Darren Rowse @problogger concluded his post saying, “Short Form content is powerful in driving traffic to and building conversation and community around your longer form content.”

The community of us gathered in response to Connie’s 30-day blogging challenge is seeing this principle at work. The challenge is not only about creating 30 days of content, but also about getting in the habit of creating content. What I’ve observed after sporadically posting on my blog for just over a year: It’s deflating to just whistle into the void. And that is the amazing piece of this blogging challenge, because the third part of it is stepping into a flow of making connections, which we are doing via Twitter and also via Facebook and the Facebook Networked Blogs application.

There are just an amazing number of ways and places to connect, so it’s a challenge to keep all the pieces straight. And it’s so delicious to connect into a conversation with real people who are doing high-integrity work online, learning and supporting each other in the 30 day blog challenge. There’s great diversity of expertise, yet each colleague speaks with authenticity and authority. Check it out on Twitter at #blog30.