The following is an extended version of my column in this week's AdAge.
Spend five minutes with me or my blog and you’ll find out quickly that I am a geek. Not only am I a geek, I am proud of it.
A geek, as defined by Wikipedia (where else!), is “a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination.” Usually it’s exemplified in one’s prowess with technology and new media. Famous geeks include Benjamin Franklin, director George Lucas, Senator John Edwards and HDnet’s Mark Cuban
You can spot a geek a mile away. We’re the ones who line up outside the Apple Store minutes after one of our supreme leaders, Steve Jobs, unveils the latest MacBook. We’re also the primary evangelists driving the application of social media and Web 2.0 technologies in business. We even have our own language, throwing around terms like Ajax, metaverse, API, GTD and OPML.
If you’re not a full-blown geek (and the vast majority are not) it’s a little easy to either ignore us or feel somewhat intimidated by our love of acronyms. In fact, my boss often reminds me to “de-geek” my PowerPoint presentations so I don’t put the crowd to sleep. Nevertheless, there’s no denying that - like it or not - geeks are driving your marketing agenda. If you don’t believe me, ask Diet Coke and Mentos.
To fully understand how digital media and technology-empowered consumers are changing the marketing landscape, it helps if you embrace your inner geek. Note, I am not suggesting that you memorize the names of all the members of the Jedi Council. Rather, I offer some basic steps to become more versed in the tools your customers are using to shape your messages.
One of the easiest things to do is to start using bookmarklets - sometimes called favelets. These are basically special bookmarks that with a single click perform a specific function, rather than take you to a Web page. For example, I keep a bookmark in my browser that when clicked will automatically take whatever page I am viewing and tell me who’s blogging about it. Another pulls up related pages from Google.
Second, open an account on del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site, and start sharing links with the world. In doing so, you will find people with whom you share similar interests. This will lead to serendipity that might spark your next big idea. (Del.icio.us by the way gives you bookmarklets that streamline the link sharing process.)
Finally, dabble with widgets. These are small little interactive tools that stream specialized bits of information . Some, like the Yahoo’s Widget Engine, run on your desktop. Others, such as those found at Netvibes.com, run in a browser. There are widgets that stream stock information and headlines, but there are even more sophisticated ones that pull images from Flickr and blog searches too.
Don’t be afraid to embrace your inner geek. It will pay off in the long run in helping to understand how today’s technology empowered audiences tick.
