Could a magician make a living if she had no secrets?
How about you?
Could you make a living if everything you did was simple, easy, and completely open to the public? What if anyone could do the things that allow you to make your living?
Zatanna is a property of DC Comics.
Don’t show everything you know
One of my favorite business books is Advantage Play by David Ben. Ben, who I’ve mentioned before, was both a tax lawyer and a professional magician. The title of his book describes a technique used by magicians, and professionals, whereby a combination of preparation, practice, and creativity is used to perform amazing and difficult things with seeming ease. By keeping people in the dark as to your methods, you can seem to perform magic.
Social media, of course, doesn’t work that way.
Show all, share all, give more than you get.
One of the hallmarks of social media, Web 2.0, blogging and new PR is transparency, openness and candor. Like the principles of open source software, you give, give, and give and contribute into a public repository (either centralized or distributed). Secrets disappear as we strive to follow the new rules of engagement.
There’s no doubt that this method is working well for some people. Doing stuff for free makes you look generous. People like generosity. It’s a good way to become famous and popular
If, on the other hand, the Amazing Mumford explained how “A La Peanut Butter Sandwiches!” really worked:
- his magician peers would shun him because he’d be cutting into their livelihoods
- his fans would gradually disappear because they’d know how to do his tricks, so they wouldn’t pay for him to do them
(On a lark, I tried searching for “open source magicians”. The only one that I found was this guy and he had some interesting things to say. FYI.)
So why is it that some professions keep their knowledge, methods, and ideas under lock and key with high barriers to entry while others seem to facilitate sharing as the means to success?
Because here’s what would happen if you reverse course and keep things too close to the chest in social media:
- your social media peers would shun you because you’d be seen as being greedy, aloof, and out of step with the rest of the pack.
- your fans would gradually disappear because they’d also see you as being greedy, kind of like the kid at daycare who refuses to share his toys and then finds out that no one wants to play with him.
Free things aren’t always simple or easy. It’s one thing to be given a solution – it’s another thing to be able to execute the solution. There’s talent, skill, knowledge, discipline, and effort.
The real trick of social media, open source, and free stuff
Remember open book exams? You can walk in to the examination room with textbooks, notes, etc. and use them to help you write your exam. It doesn’t get much more free than that! You can walk in with the answers!
This is, of course, not quite true. The grading standards on open book exams can be higher than closed book exams. Moreover, unless you have a good understanding of your subject material, the textbook won’t help – you won’t know where to go to find the answers that you’re looking for.
It’s quite cool that a number of bloggers and writers like to share thoughts and ideas with the rest of the world. It seems like they are giving away a lot for free. Thing is: there’s a cost. There’s always a cost.
By giving things away, you are removing barriers to entry – anyone can get started.
However, like the example of the open book exam, unless you already have some mastery of the subject matter, free stuff won’t help. Linux is free, but a very large number of people would struggle with trying to install it and make it work because we don’t have the background knowledge to do the work.
Does that mean that social media sharing types are frauds and master illusionists? Do they just give away the free stuff, much like a drug dealer does, to hook you for more?
Like many things in life, I don’t think it’s a clear cut answer. Most people, including myself, would agree that this fine gentleman, and this fine lady, just as examples, are genuine, talented, hard working people who share their knowledge for love of the craft as much as anything else. I believe there are a lot of other people like them.
I also believe that there are shills, swindlers, frauds, and phoneys who peddle social media, as Greg Davies once noted. Paradoxically enough, I think that you do need to beware of many of the folks who want to charge you for social media magic, at least up front. That kind of thinking is out of step with a large portion of the industry; it suggests a short term profit motive that sometimes doesn’t have much substance to support it. Take the money and run, so to speak.
Others build relationships and gain permission to ask to help in bigger (and more costly, but effective) ways as the relationships develop.
Closing thoughts
Is it magic, illusion, or slight of hand? Is there enough substance in any of this to warrant charging for services on how to use social media to better interact with clients, peers, or fans? Is it immoral or wrong to do so? Is it all gimmickry that hides some pretty banal stuff? Are there times when transparency is not warranted?
What do you think?
I think of it more as a new technology that some people just do not understand yet. If people see this as true, then they are typically willing to pay for consulting in order to understand. This is even more true of larger corporations who only delve into new technologies when there is a true need (or they are just late to the party).
D'OH! I completely overlooked the tech angle, Rob. Good point.
Hi Mark – Tough question. I guess if folk would like to pay to learn how to use something, to save themselves some time, I don't see the harm.
I've found some of the social media sites I've used so far confusing to get the hang of and I think I would have liked a book telling me how to do it. I know folk write blog posts. But like you said – it's not always free info – if it's difficult to master, I guess you're not going to learn a lot by reading a few blogposts.
I don't think there's an easy answer there. But if I had to answer, boiling down the fat, I'd say: Everyone's motives are as different as they are.
I believe in giving away a lot of stuff for free. It shows the value of your site and builds your personal credibility. That being said, the giving away of content is often what draws people to ask you to do more work for them, this time for pay.
Interesting. I guess I've been on enough social media sites to understand the basics, so I don't find them so hard anymore. But some of them are hard to get the hang of at first.
Yes, often that's the hope – that people will eventually pay for more.
I think it is best to teach someone to learn. I have been in a tech support role for most of my career and people have a way of just asking for things instead of getting the answer, when it can be faster to get the answer yourself. So after a few years I decided to start teaching how to get the answer and not just giving the answer and this dramatically reduced our tech support requests.
Great info and I read the Open Source Magician (a good read)
Cool, thanks Jim. Yeah, I was quite intrigued by the whole Open Source Magician thing.
Mark,
I'm a fan of the 'thought leadership' or 'value forward' marketing concepts where we share a certain percentage of value to recapture the remaining value that the customer seeks. In a way, this is altruistic as we're helping people through information. Do we make them want more, sure, but if they're 'in the market' and we're 'helping them make a decision' then so much the better.
I sometimes wonder what all of the folks who blog like mad about social media do with their time? I mean, right now I'm making the choice to join the conversation vs. finish a client deliverable… Just like we make choices to work 'overtime' or help out our favorite charity. As long as it benefits the collective good of organizations long-term, then I say, share the secrets!
Seesmic video reply from Disqus.
Just posted this on Digg, thought provoking
Dana: I'm convinced that Chris Brogan is only one of a set of identical triplets. Or he's cloned himself. Or he's got amazingly lifelike androids that fill in for him. Seriously, the man's a juggernaut. It's an incredible tradeoff.
My gut tells me that the pictures give this post the best chance on Digg, as opposed to the content. Seriously, though, thank you.
Hi Heidi, sorry for the delay in responding. Excellent analogy and very good point. Thanks very much for stopping by!
so, THIS is where all that traffic on the fourth came from
i'm the “open source magician” guy and that was one of many rants/tirades i wrote a few years ago for a software user group focusing on web browsers for the Dreamcast game console and that's why terms like “passport”, “dp”, “chab”, “dreamkey”, etc. seemed out of place – they are names of various software for the Dreamcast and, as you may have gathered, some were the japanese-issue and the rest of the world were importing, bootlegging, and pirating them and then going to our little group in droves for translations and guidance on how to use them…
hope that helps the post make more sense and even more relevant to what is being discussed here…
Thanks very much for providing the clarification and for stopping by!