I’ve got a little more left in me from the IACP presentation/posts.  First, I don’t think I posted the right picture with the last post.  To say something is “The End” is never right.  I just liked the picture, but it just hasn’t sit well with me since I posted.  This one makes up for it.

I’ve gotten multiple requests (thank you, everyone!) for my presentation, so I’m going to record some audio and post the deck + VO later this week.  I’ve sent it around to some folks since the conference and I don’t think it’s going to be useful to them without the VO.  I am a visual person, but I always have problems with someone else’s presentation.  First question I ask – “can you walk me through this?”  The good presentations don’t include many words.  They’re more discussion starters.  So, it’s coming.  I’ll get it posted as soon as I can.

The one thing I can do now, though, from what I’ve sent around and posted, is to give you my business card analogy.  As I said previously, my point of view on video is that it is just another piece of content.  An object.  Just like a business card.

I can spend a lot and get that business card made to where it looks really nice or I can make it myself for a fraction of the cost and it won’t look as nice.  The first impression is important, certainly depending on who I’m giving the card to, but in the end, the purpose is the same:  to give people information.  My objective with this business card is to share it with as many people as I can and maybe they’ll share it with people they know.  But I can only measure that object by the number of people who see it – it’s all about quantity.

There’s another piece of the puzzle, though, and that’s what I hope happens when I give my business card away.  I want someone to reach out and start a relationship with me.  Relationships can grow.  It doesn’t matter if I give my business card to a 100 people if none of them reach out to me and we don’t develop a relationship.  Relationships aren’t about quantity.  They’re about quality. 

And this is where I think it’s important to think of objects as just that.  It’s not just the thing you’re producing (the content).  It’s what surrounds that thing (the context).  It’s finding the right balance between the two – content and context.  Between quantity and quality.  Between objects and relationships.  As marketers and communicators, we try to navigate the ecosystem as best we can to strike this balance in everything we do.  We try to be more successful than not.  But it’s not easy.

Do you just give your business card to as many people as you can?  Or do you complete the puzzle and try to develop a relationship?