It may been that Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger were ahead of their time when the wrote “the cluetrain manifesto” back in 1999 as it is more solid (and realized) now than it was when written.  Below is a fantastic excerpt that applies directly to much of what’s happening now in Social Media.  Since we crave easy answers, many “experts” are willing to provide it wrapped up nice and neat in a hit list, a recipe.  ”The desire to have such a list betrays the moment.”  Perfect. In reality Social is difficult, and an unsettling proposition for nearly all of us.

In our client workshop today, we touched on this and the ultimate failed efforts of those following “how to” lists and tips.  There will be many who’ll ultimately proclaim that Social doesn’t work when in fact it’s the formulaic list approach that has failed them.  Social isn’t an item on your todo that is marked “done”. It’s a different way of doing business altogether. No doubt part of why Cluetrain is subtitled, “the end of business as usual“. Please read the excerpt below. What is being said is absolutely sound and applies directly to the moment.

Quoting directly from Cluetrain:

Well… OK. Because you’ve been so patient and read so bloody much, we’ll let you in on the Secret of Our Success. Just follow the twelve easy steps below and you’re sure to be on your way to fame and fortune in the exciting new world of Webusiness. (Caution: It is vital that you follow these steps precisely in the order given. Otherwise, we are not responsible for the mutant hellspawn you may inadvertently call forth from the realm of the undead.)

The Cluetrain Hit-One-Outta-the-Park Twelve-Step
Program for Internet Business Success

1. Relax
2. Have a sense of humor
3. Find your voice and use it
4. Tell the truth
5. Don’t panic
6. Enjoy yourself
7. Be brave
8. Be curious
9. Play more
10. Dream always
11. Listen up
12. Rap on

Do these things and you just can’t miss.

Of course, there’s as much distance between this advice and the decisions you make every day as there is between “Go forth and multiply” and “100 Ways to Pick Up Hot Chicks and Radical Dudes.” Still, we yearn for easy advice. It’s so hard to give up the old wish for stimulus-response marketing and management. Hard to go back to the days of the “talking cure” when psychotherapy meant years of slogging through memories and dreams instead of a slap on the back, and instructions to “nurture the inner child” and eat two bran muffins every day. Hard to forget the televised version of Anna Karenina that goes from start to finish in two hours (the train comes to a screeching halt just in time) and reopen the musty volume and soak into every snow-flecked page.

Look, we’d love to derive twelve happy instructions from the wash of ideas swirling around us. Really. We could market those puppies like Tang in a sauna. Seminars, workbooks, T-shirts, coffee mugs…

But it doesn’t work that way. This is an existential moment. It’s characterized by uncertainty, the dissolving of the normal ways of settling uncertainties, the evaporation of the memory of what certainty was once like. In times like this, we all have an impulse to find something stable and cling to it, but then we’d miss the moment entirely. There isn’t a list of things you can do to work the whirlwind. The desire to have such a list betrays the moment.

There may not be twelve or five or twenty things you can do, but there are ten thousand. The trick is, you have to figure out what they are. They have to come from you. They have to be your words, your moves, your authentic voice.

—

You might read or listen to Cluetrain. Then refer to the site as a reference.

Extra low on time? Start with the 95 Theses.