What Can Internet Marketers Learn from History? Pioneering Thought
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When I say learn from history, I mean actual history. Not last year or two years ago, which I agree is a lifetime in the modern world; but I’m talking about decades and even generations back.
I’ve lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania all of my life. It’s a middle-sized city with small town appeal. Every neighborhood is vastly unique and gives Pittsburgh the feeling of a lot of small towns rooted around the Downtown metropolitan area.
As a child I never gave much thought to the fact that I was visiting museums and libraries, or watching sporting events in venues named after some of our nation’s best known industrialists and capitalists. Men like Carnegie and Mellon who led America’s launch to becoming the wealthiest nation on the planet…from right here in my backyard.
It wasn’t until several years ago when I was starting my own business that I realized this city I live in was the starting point for Lewis and Clark when they began their westward explorations.
It was the birthplace of the American Oil Industry, as well as the modern environmental movement in America and now has the largest concentration of green buildings anywhere in the country–not bad for a town once known as the Smoky City because of industrial air pollution.
It set the original standards for steel production, coal mining and commercial river transportation; and today is home to some of the top minds in fields such as biotechnology, robotics, fiber optics, electronic commerce, health care and life sciences.
Learning this history gave me pause when I first launched my own business. I was certainly struck with a sense of awe and pride in my home town and those who came before me, but I was also given a new ruler by which success should be measured. See, making money is easy. Making lots of money isn’t all that hard either. But names like Carnegie and Mellon aren’t carved into the keystones of buildings or printed in educational books simply because they made money, they’re celebrated and studied because they made disruptions that changed the way business was conducted.
Their actions changed the way people worked and lived. In short, they made a difference–and profits naturally follow commercial disruptions. Today people speak of disruptive technologies a lot, and if you pay attention you’ll see that whenever something gets labeled as disruptive it always gets plenty of money thrown at it.
So, how can Internet Marketers take advantage of what history teaches us? Well, first we have to recognize what all of the people I’ve mentioned have in common…they all went against the grain at some point or another. They made decisions to do things that weren’t always “tried and tested”, but rather new and unique.
As an Internet Marketer you could liken this to developing some new promotional tactic online. I don’t know what that might be, you’ll have to forge your own path, but it would be something completely different from setting up a web site or blog with advertisements and affiliate links, using landing pages and driving traffic with PPC campaigns.
Maybe by looking at the massive traffic flows that occur every day across social networking sites there’s room for some new break-through widget or strategy to divert the buying traffic out of the herds?
Perhaps there’s a next step for commercialized RSS feeds just waiting to be taken?
The point is anybody can do what everybody else is doing and make some money from it, but history shows us that innovative risk takers are where the real success stories come from, and the lesson is to keep your eye open for that unique opportunity when it presents itself, then have the courage to act on it.
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Great read…I don’t necessarily know if I want my name remembered but rather my ideas/company kinda like you stated…change the way people view things or do something different and the money follows…don’t chase the money. Enjoyed that and feel it’s very true.
I’m glad you enjoyed the posting. I understand what you mean, though it is because of the ideas and actions these people chased and took with their business endeavors that we remember their names.
If they hadn’t been disruptive in business few people anywhere would know who they were today, and they certainly wouldn’t be studied and discussed in classrooms from grade school through grad-school levels.
Puts a lot in perspective. As an employee for an SEO company, I am always trying to figure out new and better ways to do my job. I hope one day I can discover a tactic that will totally change the way advertising is done on the internet.