Ghost pain
Tomorrow I am going to roll out a new talk on social media discussing how a strategy in a combat sport like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu can mirror your strategy in your social media campaigns. Or, to put it a different way, if you don't have a strategy in social media, just like not having one in a fight - you will get your ass kicked.
In the beginning of the talk I am going to show a video of my first no-gi match (think closer to a UFC outfit rather than a more traditional look as in karate) in which I did well early on but as soon as I was tested, I crumpled. In this match the guy I am fighting is supposed to be 145lbs (he isn't) and it appears towards the end of the match he gets me in what is known as a knee bar, except he doesn't.
I tap anyway.
I tapped because instead of training my brain to push through, work through the problem, and advance my position, I allowed my brain to fill in the blanks with ghost pain and assume that my knee going the wrong direction is grounds for quitting - which I did.
As the match ends I roll over and look like I am in a ton of pain, in actuality I am beyond disappointed in myself and learning a lesson in real time. This would be a watershed moment for me where I simply stopped quitting. I stopped quitting in competition, in my relationships, at work, or at play - as soon as it got hard, or I didn't understand, I felt shame, or pain, or whatever, I tried to push through first.
It is the basis of the talk tomorrow because I feel some brands, brand managers, or marketers either don't have a real strategy on a chosen social platform, are trying to execute (terribly) on ALL of the social platforms, or give up when things like Snapchat, Yik Yak, Whisper, Periscope, Meerkat, or Slingshot show up. When the reality of 2015 is this, as marketers, we are living in amazing times where our customers are actually telling us exactly what matters to them, all we have is go to where they actually are and listen.
The days of putting up an open sign in the window and waiting are long over. You need a strategy with a set of goals on a given platform that you can excel at to reach the right customer, with the right message, at the right time, on the right device and that is how you win.
A strategy like that beats any opponent regardless of size. A strategy like that allows you to push through the hard parts and move your brand into a better position so that you can turn that customer from a lead to an advocate, from cold to closed, and your brand from just competing to winning.
Discovering your pain points is an important exercise, you just need to understand which ones actually hurt, work through those, and ignore all the ghost pain - they are distractions that take you and your team away from winning.