Just one week after the November 2024 Core Update finished rolling out Google announced the… December 2024 Core Update!
The Real Resolution
The reasons that most resolutions (and most improvement attempts in general) fail is that they are based on unrealistic expectations. Don’t try losing 50 pounds try losing 10. Don’t try to double your income, try improving it by 35%. And stop trying to get along with people, including family, who don’t want to get along and don’t want to be helped.
You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped, and that includes yourself. If you want to change your behavior, change your attitude.
Here’s the truth: I don’t think most people need a VPN all the time. Sure, virtual private networks are often pitched as the ultimate online security tool, and they do have their moments. But honestly, I’ve realized I don’t need one running 24/7. For my everyday activities like checking emails or scrolling through Instagram, my home Wi-Fi and secure websites (hello, HTTPS) are enough.
Marketing as we know it happened because of machines. Machines made factories dramatically more efficient, which meant that producers could no longer easily sell everything they made. When you go from making four ceramic plates a day to 4,000, your capacity starts to look like a problem.
That’s a new challenge. A farmer could figure out how to use every bit of fertile soil available.
CBS TV didn’t have excess capacity. There are only 24 hours in a day, and they could only broadcast one at a time. YouTube, on the other hand, makes almost all of its decisions based on their unlimited capacity to host video.
The challenge of infinity is contagious. While some freelancers are fully booked, most have hours each day unspoken for. An unspoken hour of capacity can feel like a burden.
The quest for more is seductive.
But what happens when we accept that capacity might not be excess? It might simply be capacity.
How do we start to see our way toward better, not simply more?
When I include links to various books and items on this blog, your purchases generate a small royalty that I earmark for worthy causes. This year, we were able to help BuildOn and the community in Khakh build a new school. It’s the first real school building the village has ever had, and it’s likely that members of the community, inspired by this first school, will be organizing to build a second one soon.
A building is more than shelter. It’s a flag, a placeholder, a symbol of commitment. A school like this transforms the culture, and will make a lifelong difference for thousands of people.
If you want to change the world, change the systems. And buildings are a fine place to start.
Tens of thousands of miles away, we’re also able to help rebuild housing with the Fuller Center.
The ocean is made of drops.
As cyber threats continue to escalate and data breaches make headlines, businesses can no longer afford to take risks with sensitive documents, especially e-signatures.
I’ve been in marketing for coming up to ten years now (*internal scream at the passing of time*) and, while I like to think I have a bit of savvy when it comes to content marketing, I still sometimes find…
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“You can try this at home…”
But you probably won’t.
The secret recipe isn’t the reason Coke is successful. And the recipe for KFC isn’t much of a recipe at all.
The secret way you do the thing isn’t what keeps your clients coming back. It’s the part you do in public that matters.
Organizations lie all the time. Big lies, sometimes, but usually small ones.
Is the call volume actually unusually heavy? Did a chef really prepare this meal just for me?
These fiblets are so common that they become part of the culture, a trope that lets the user know that this is a real organization–the same way that certain kinds of logos are trendy, these lies show that the organization is part of a particular genre. (Have you ever noticed how many INSURANCE COMPANIES WRITE SOME OF THEIR RULES IN ALL CAPS? It’s because that’s what big insurance companies do).
The insurgent marketer, then, has two practical choices:
- You can easily show that you’re not of this group by relentlessly telling the truth to your customers. “We know that this phone tree is inconvenient, but it saves our operators time and so it saves us money.” Or, “The boss doesn’t want you to walk around the service bay, it has nothing to do with insurance regulations.”
- You can sniff out the fiblets your competitors use and use them as well, creating the meta fib that you’re as big and heartless a bureaucracy as they are.
As consumers, it definitely doesn’t pay to call out the fiblets when talking to hard-working frontline employees. They’ve got it tough enough already.
When the truck makes a delivery at the nearby True Value hardware store, Danny needs to figure out which shelf to put it on.
Should the extension cords go next to the hoses? After all, they both do the same thing, one with electricity and one with water…
The purpose of putting things in order is so that others can find them.
If you’ve been frustrated with a price list, a menu, a user interface or a bookshelf, it’s because someone didn’t spend the time to understand the expected taxonomy.
When we sort our stuff, we’re telling people a story. A story about our stuff and a story about how we see the world.
We don’t have to like the fact that the world demands a taxonomy, but we can accept that it does. Strangers want to know what shelf to put us on.