A couple of days ago, Internet marketing agency Outspoken Media’s chief branding officer Lisa Barone posted about the emails she’s received from readers, noting the number of requests for “ultimate rules” for internet marketing success. The question is, whether those who’ve been sending in email will eventually find what they’re looking for.

The drive to find the “ultimate” way to do something implies that there is one best way to do something and that a web-lebrity (ok, I’m using this term) like Lisa will give the answers/secrets, and somehow everyone who follows the rules will be able to replicate the results with precision.

Right?

Wrong.

So if her headline “Stop looking for rules. There aren’t any” is true. Does that mean that newbies are scrod?

And more importantly, is the “stop looking for rules because there aren’t any” a rule itself, making the post paradoxical/oxymoronic?

Here’s her answer:

If I define it as a rule, then it comes moot, right? 😉

I think you can either take it and apply it or you can sit here and argue semantics as to whether its a rule, life lesson or something that should be found inside a fortune cookie. As time becomes more scarce and
more precious, I like to focus on what matters. Arguing semantics rarely does. Unless you’re doing it with Michael Gray and the it’s THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS! 😉

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Instead, here’s her advice:

I think people who are looking for the universal rule book are putting themselves on a path to be mediocre. Following the worn path rarely leads to anything particularly interesting or great. It just ensures
you’re starting out just like everybody else. There’s no point of difference. I don’t want to know the 10 things that you say I need to do on Twitter. That cookie-cutter information does nothing for me. I want
to hack Twitter. I want to turn it upside down and inside out and do things that every expect would tell me not to and be horrified at. Because that’s how I’m going to learn what it’s capable of and what I’m
capable of using it. That’s where I find my value.

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Which makes perfect sense if you’re willing to deal with 2 challenges: fear and failure.

Fear is something that most newbies, whether dipping their digital toes into twitter or social media are going to deal with. Especially if you’re constantly reading about successes like the CoffeeGroundz cafe which saw business double and soon became a destination for tweetups (twitter meetups). The spate of success stories can be pretty intimidating for the clueless.

It’s the rare individual who likes to be mess up on their first attempt at doing something new, although it’s a likely outcome for the majority of people who try something new. If you’re working in a corporate environment, the repercussions of messing up can be Continue reading →