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A Testament To Search Marketing Knowledge
by Todd Mintz.
Traduction francaise: Un Témoignage sur le Savoir en Marketing de Recherche
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky, for what looked like an eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without features save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cuts its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway…”
…Stephen King, The Gunslinger
I did a seminar a bunch of years ago and one of the most powerful concepts that I took away from that experience is the idea that all knowledge is divided into three categories:
- Things that you know
- Things that you don’t know
- Things that you don’t know that you don’t know
If a person doesn’t know something, they can either learn it, consult with somebody who does know, or alter their behavior to lessen / avoid the impact of not knowing. However, a person can’t react to knowledge that they don’t know exists which is unfortunate if what they “don’t know that they don’t know” profoundly impacts some aspect of their life.
Only recently did I realize how important this concept is to the success and education of a search marketer.
Genesis
People come to search marketing from many backgrounds: Web Development, Web Design, Marketing, or even unusual ones like Law and Chiropractic Medicine. What draws us in? The lure of easy money? The necessity of lead generation through any possible means? For many of us, our initial encounter with Search Marketing was like the ultimate “Blind Date” that has put us on a life-changing personal and professional journey.
When we start on our path of search marketing education, we get exposed to a ton of information that is totally foreign to us. For all that we’re learning, a realization occurs as to how vast the expanse is of search marketing knowledge and how little of it we’ve actually mastered. As our personal knowledge base increases, we get enough insight to see how much “we know that we don’t know” has also increased exponentially. At this stage, there is no way we can conceptualize the outer limits of possible search marketing knowledge.
Job
Eventually, all the individual bits of knowledge we’ve been learning starts to make sense to us. We can unify what we know into some form of coherent search marketing theory. Our cumulative wisdom becomes valuable to others. If we’re employed, we can ROI for our employer, or we’re valuable enough for somebody to purchase our knowledge at a nice hourly rate.
When we’re able to impose order on the chaos of search marketing information, the “lay of the land” become much clearer. We now realize we can’t know it all, so if we’re smart, we take a subsection of the whole and become expert at that. Even with a specialty, we soon realize that what we don’t know, even in our little fiefdom, is quite vast. In order to succeed, we need to associate ourselves with others that excel in complimentary search marketing disciplines so that we can continue successfully along our path. Fortunately with the rise of social media, this is easier to do than ever.
Numbers
The people who become really successful at search marketing don’t get that way by rote copying of others…they ultimately take what they’ve learned and forge their own paths. If we’re to make it successfully through this stage of the journey, we need to be perceptive enough to take the concepts that we’ve learned and meld them together in new and unique ways that aren’t known by other travelers.
Even this far down the road, we continue to realize how much we don’t know about search marketing. However, the process of learning new search concepts becomes much less daunting with our advanced background. Also, we are finally able to make headways into the realm of the “don’t know that we don’t know”. When our knowledge becomes so advanced that we are able to conceptualize new and unique search marketing ideas, we are able to push back the fences that separate “possible” knowledge from the unknown (and then we can begin to master what we were previously unable to conceptualize).
“Revelations are found in clouds” by shastadaisy
Revelation
The most successful people in our industry aren’t necessarily the ones that know the most. Rather, it’s the people who have taken the knowledge learned along the journey and successfully applied it in business and commerce. In our community, we have a plethora of successful individuals who used search marketing as the engine to drive extreme revenue generation (in specialties like Publishing / Programming Conferences, Social Media Domination, Affiliate Marketing, Search Marketing Education, or Premium Content).
There is plenty of stuff these folks don’t know and they aren’t able to conceptualize everything that can help them grow their businesses even further. However, they’ve locked down their position in the industry ecosystem and can follow paths based upon want, not need.
Ultimately, this is what we all should strive for on our journey…garner enough knowledge in order that we can carve out a little piece of heaven that can secure our family’s future.
As posted in SEM, SEO on January 12, 2009.
12 Responses so far:
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Awesome. There might be a fourth category of knowing: things we *think* we know but don't. That's why Yoda tells young Skywalker, "you must un-learn what you have learned."
@Adam Audette - I was just thinking that myself; what about that which a lot of people think they know, but actually know nothing about. Because sometimes we pick up the incorrect way of doing things whereas there is a better way to do it.
This post must rank up there as one of the most pertinent I've come across recently. The reason why I enjoy search marketing is because it is so fluid and ever changing. Sometimes one has to unlearn that what was learnt quite recently, very quickly! One thing is for sure, search marketing must rank as one of the greatest and most unexplored new frontiers!
Successful application is key in almost any subject of life. The top search marketers have applied their knowledge and made something of it: like almost any other aspect of life.
Keep up to date, build your knowledge from many different sources and apply it.
I find that in non internet life, there are often very successful people who are not even interested in gathering knowledge. How many cases one reads about where, the attitude is 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' and 'not invented here' attitudes? At least in the webworld, we do not find it. At least I have not found it.
Some unusual people such as Lawyers and Medical Experts go into Search Marketing because it is now a necessity and it might have been their hobby since their teens.
Very true, another thing to keep in mind. What is common sense to one may not be to another.
amen.
Utah SEO Says: amen**
Why???
A post combining two of my favorite things SEM and The Gunslinger! Thanks Todd, enlightening post.
When You have to spend to much time for gathering knowledge You may miss time for building Your success
Yeah no reason to get distracted. Persistence is a key.