The Measure of Success

A while ago I posted about the overwhelming interest in things like the number of followers, and how this interest could be counterproductive if it got in the way of our basic psychological need for authenticity.

To paraphrase a Hootsuite tweet: It's not about the number of followers, but the quality of the followers.

It seems to me that the real value of integrity is that we get to serve people who need our help, our vision, our experience and way of seeing things - not somebody else's. We are none of us the exact statistical average of a person, so what use is it to pitch to that person?

I was particularly inspired by the interview with Salma Hayek about one of the movies she was involved in producing.

My favourite quote? 'I don't like your boxes, and I am bored with your boxes!' Say it loud! I'm bored too!

I realize that there is some irony to my previous post. Given that I am, after all, on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and Udemy (not to mention here), it is clear that I am interested in how to improve my outreach and content. But I am happy to say that in the months since that post, I feel more solidly anchored to my vision.

As much as I think it is important to do things 'right' (a lot of marketing is basic have-a-good-product-and-let-people-know-about-it-in-an-appealing-way, which just seems logical), I also think that too much focus on getting people to 'like'  your work is a bad idea. You are doing it for you, to be who you are, whether other people like it or not should be used as feedback or not used at all, but should never be the goal of the work.

So, without kissing all aspects of marketing goodbye, we should probably be using what we know in that field to promote things we need, rather than promoting needs for things (that we don't need).