This weekend I began the intensive ritual of Spring gardening. Beyond the cutting, trimming, fertilizing, watering, and weed pulling, there is the delightful process of transplanting seedlings that have spontaneously sprung-up over the course of the year. I also dug-up and transplanted some flowers that are virtually roots with seemingly dead stems. They are now relocated, to the yet disbelief of my nine-year old, and will bloom into beautiful lantanas in just a short while.
I was thinking today how thought, true thinking, is much like gardening. While our technical constructs may seem rigid, the development of new ideas and flourishing of endeavors is quite organic. Sometimes one idea is an off-shoot of another gaining a life of its own. Other times ideas may seem dead on the surface but can be given new life with the right environment and nutrients.
Web marketing is, at its core, an organic process. Who would have thought just a few years ago that the strategy for effective marketing would become as broad as it is today. B2B companies are waking-up to the reality that business today means:
- Managing their online identity on places like wikipedia
- Link building on sites and directories
- Daily updating their online paid advertising
- Producing weekly if not daily news and blog feeds
- Daily analysis of web traffic reports
- Responding to customers who demand instant response
- Taking a proactive stance with search engines
- Constantly updating their site
- Posting media to YouTube, Flickr
- Managing a barrage of spam and malicous activity while at the same time,
- Continuing to dodge the black list bullets to reach customers
- Do more with less resources as the competition goes global
Now, more than ever before, effective marketing, successful businesses require organic thinking individuals. Thoughtful technologists, marketers, sales and management people who respond quickly to new mediums for promotion will be leaders in the emerging economy.