Just go to my website. I’ll text you. I posted it on my FB page. I tweeted it. I found it on LinkedIn. He sent me a Branchout request. It’s on my Pinterest. I saw your 4square check-in at the gym. Did you get my email?
Noooooooo.
I may have hit the wall this week. It could be the pace or magnitude of my work for the last few weeks. It could be that the sunshine blazed in Los Angeles. Maybe it was walking the dogs on the beach.
Sunday was my first day where I dreaded turning on a device. Any device: laptop, iPad, iPhone, and so on. I would have cut the cord but I believe in the “battery up” rule (always be charging) so cords were superfluous.
Typically I have a digital reflex when I read something interesting (the Sunday NY Times newspaper is a treasure trove), go somewhere inspiring or have any experience worth sharing (good or bad). I also have a digital reflex when too much time has passed (about 20 minutes) and I haven’t gotten real time information from friends, bloggers, news or things you can find on the Internet.
That digital reflex is a kind of perimeter check. I look for texts, scroll through email, and hit FB, Tweetdeck, Huffpo and half a dozen other places. Once my digital perimeter is secured – do I know everything that’s going on? – then I can go radio silent for a while.
The Internet isn’t a bad habit, it’s my business.
My personal brand depends on connectivity. And, building a personal brand really does take checking in during the day, seven days a week. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time. You can be very successful on social media, if you devote just twenty minutes a day it. That’s if you have a strategy that you’re executing, rather than an “as it moves you” approach.
Because I have global clients and my output is web-dependent, my involvement is much heavier. Hence, I am constantly connecting.
So when I took out a giant sketch pad and mind-mapped the keynote speech I’m giving at the American Marketing Association for their 75th annual celebration in LA, I was shocked. I betrayed all my devices by just using paper and pen, and opened some books (real books!).
I was pitching a shut out until I wanted a dictionary definition of persuasion. Yes, I have a real dictionary. But it’s so heavy with all the words that I didn’t want to look up. Pages of them. And, I wanted to see more than one source when it came to deciding on the definition I would use.
So my urgent desire for information overpowered my electronic hangover. I turned on my laptop and got what I needed: an affirmation of the power of words: spoken or typed.
Persuasion, says Dictionary.com:
the process by which a person’s attitude or behavior, without duress, are influenced by communication from other people.
In other words, a perfect endorsement of the web.
