We have a couple of people coming in to interview this week, and it brings questions to mind for me. Not the obvious ones–though those are bouncing around in there–but ones about how I can shortcut the long and winding path to getting what we do. It takes a while. Once you get it, then you can start innovating. Things come zipping along nicely, and it goes from being a bunch of acronyms to being a delicious basket of possibilities. For most people, there’s a hurdle of frustration and boredom before the “aha!” moment with search marketing, made more frustrating because you understand the potential but haven’t quiiiiite clicked with it yet.

This is part of a larger block of thinking I’ve been doing for the past couple of months. It would be awfully nice to be able to have some nuggets of insight in hand this week, though. For me, it’s made more important because we’re interviewing a potential summer intern tomorrow morning. She’s smart–4.0, worked on the AdFed team whose project went to nationals, really wants to learn about web marketing and get some actual work experience. I had a couple of office jobs in college hoping to get experience and learn, only to find myself mired in the admin pool. That sucks, but it sucks more when you’re the smartest one there and get to do things like staple and take an inventory of the magazine and catalogue subscriptions. In the year 2000, I got praised by the boss two levels up from mine for the brilliant idea of using the internet to find the information nobody had been able to locate. I mean praised as in stood up in front of the office and talked about as an example.

The last thing I want to do is waste my time and the time and resources of someone who actually wants to learn and could do a great job. Yes, it’s just a summer job. I get that. But if those of us who live a level or two above the norm in the tech atmosphere could find a way to put people closer to that Matrix moment of understanding by being clear for once, we could reap some really amazing things. Maybe it’s one of those things that’s personal and you find in your own time. Social media is that way–once you figure out how to use it and connect in ways that make sense, it’s powerful and not a task. Virtual worlds are that way–once you make friends or learn to create/build, everything falls into place and you’re hooked.

What’s the magic connecting point for what we do and how quickly can we bring people to it? Is it seeing the results graphs for what happens in the months after the site you redid goes live? Is it finding the competition’s weak spot and trouncing them? Or is it simply moving into mastery of a craft that can’t be skipped ahead to?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 5:12 pm and is filed under marketing, networking, search marketing, social marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.