Short and Sweet

I've done quite a bit of reading over the summer and I have discovered a common theme. The best messages are ones that are concise. Simply follow for Seth Godin's blog for a week and you will see the surprisingly powerful force of his short posts. In the book Made to Stick, this is the central theme. (I am halfway through the book and it already is changing everything I know about writing - definitely recommend so far) This need for short and concise has brought up a topic that I am deeply interested in now. That is the balance between short and sweet compared to that of thorough lessons. You cannot teach an engineer with simple quips. You need to take them through algorithms, formulas, and concepts. I couldn't learn marketing just through short tweets by industry leaders, I had to pick up huge books that lectured on one simple topic.

What makes this conversation so much more interesting is if you reference the lessons of old Chinese philosophers. These men believed and preached ideas of balance, yin and yang. One example, that stands most appropriate is that of a ship. A ship cannot try to battle the tide, there will be low tides, high tides. All a ship can do is sail to the current of the ocean. As with the ship, I believe it is our duty to find that balance.

Every short quip or compelling statement must be backed up by information, statistics, and training. What is difficult though is to be able to not caught up in the drone of our own lectures. We must recognize that to properly teach people we must properly mix our material.

Marketing cannot be only photos or paragraphs of text. It must be a balance.

I will continue to discuss this topic as I continue my search for the balance. Stay tuned.