Love Your Feedback & Contest: Can You Tell Me Who This Blog Is For?

Many people ask me what my blog is about, but I never look it at that way. I always had in mind who my blog is for.

A free 800-CEO-READ gift certificate for the book of your choice is yours (up to $30 value, plus additional shipping) for the most captivating on-target description of who this blog is intended for and why you keep coming back. It's not that I don't know who my intended audience is, but it's entirely possible that it doesn't match my actual audience - and anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts in your own words. (Leave contest entries in the comments below.)

I'd also like your view because I'm toying with some changes and new directions. For starters, I'm thinking of splitting off the participatory marketing and related marketing posts (i.e. ones around product is a conversation, marketing precedes product conception and innovation, and engaging in a continuous feedback loop with customers) into its own, ahem, more professional, blog and drill into the "build better product" discussion. I think this means that some of the more thought-leadership type posts specific to marketers would leave this blog, while the broader nuanced posts around what makes people tick, meaning, dialogue, relationships etc. would still remain here. Basically I'm making this blog more welcoming for folks that don't live, eat, breathe marketing and aren't intimately tied to where it's headed.

So I think that frees up this blog up to go another layer deeper below the surface. This is a fascinating observation - big hint - that John Winsor makes as he goes about writing his next book on innovation. (BTW, I mentioned that his first book is my fav marketing book last year. I only just noted yesterday he has a blog.)

A defining insight from these interviews is that companies (and individuals within those companies) would do well to focus on being innovative on a day-to-day basis rather than merely operating with a goal of creating a specific innovation.

Contest ends Tuesday, February 8th, 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time assuming there are at least ten entries in the comments below (otherwise, contest may be extended - if so, watch for further details).

After the contest, I'll share with you what my purpose and intention is, and who I think reads this blog.

Bonus: If you tell me a bit about yourself and your purpose, passion and direction, I'll make a few personal book recommendations to the winner.

Comments

[jbr]

a) i don't want an award.
b) i read you because you may me think.
c) i read you because you are willing to share
d) i read you because i know you will be there
e) i read you because you're open
f) i read you because you inspire
g) i read you because of you....

inspired by your previous post about poetry...

[Noah Fields]

Please don't split your blog apart. The reason I read your blog is because you draw connections between marketing/business and humanity. I run in to so many business/marketing blogs that tell you what to do to make money, but that leaves me empty. Sure, it can be exciting, but where's the love? I read your blog because it helps me link the hardcore business with the "human" facets of life.

Quote: "Intersection of technology, creativity & innovation, leadership, systems, beliefs and worldviews." Exactly.

I would imagine your target audience is anybody looking for sanity and escape from short-term profit business world.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Clarification:
I was thinking the new blog would be to drill into the lunatic fridges of new product development and management, which I see blogs being part of but that's only part of equation.

And then this blog could spend more time on the "intersection of technology, creativity & innovation, leadership, systems, beliefs and worldviews." Business would still be a huge focus of this blog, but it's not just a marketer's marketer blog.

[nina]

I think your blog is for anyone who is interested in evolution in its largest sense: the evolution of business, the evolution of Evelyn, the evolution of humans and the human spirit. If you care about how things are growing and changing, about what is new and different, if you want to be challenged, and you want it all to have a big heart, then you will keep reading, as I have. I love your openness, and your constant pushing to know more, to understand, and to find meaning.

[augustdiva]

Your blog is for anyone with a 21st century mind trapped in a 20th century body. Anyone looking to engage in new ways (with self, with society, with corporations, with customers) in order to evolve. Anyone who believes that new patterns and ways of being are emerging.

I keep coming back because I see you traveling a path that I've circled, criss-crossed, and otherwise contemplated. You make the connections I wish I'd made, but I wasn't paying enough attention. You pay attention, and share what you see, and so I benefit. You make me want to be less lazy.

Bonus answers: My purpose is to live with intention, or at the very least to KBO (to borrow from Churchill). My passion is to love well, and to allow myself to be loved well by others. I'm also rather enthusiastic about building castles in the sky (by, ironically, writing system specifications). My direction is to keep seeking, in whatever direction my path leads. I hate that interview question: "where do you see yourself if 5 years?" Rather, where do I see the world in 5 years? That's a much more interesting question. It's not about me anyway. It's about us, and the collective tribal story we are slowly unfolding. This blog is part of that story, which is why I love it. Thank you, Evelyn, for putting so much of you into it.

[rg]

(1)As a college student, I read your blog because you provide a more meaningful window into the world of business than any class I've taken yet
(2)Your blog is the truest written reflection I've seen of Hugh's thought: "We are here to find meaning. We are here to help other people do the same." (Thanks for that)
(3)What I read here makes me want to be a shepherd :)

[dean]

I read your blog because -
a) your posts address values and meaning
b) you introduce me to a different way to look at things
c) you are engaged with life and the things that involves

Hope your changes work as you wish and more

[Justin]

I like you're blog because you're writing it for you, not anyone else. There's no filter of a target audience or demographics. If that makes it a winding, inter-twined, unpredictable journey, then all the better (that's what life is like anyway). We like it precisely because we like the way you think. Take it wherever seems fun for you. Thanks.

[Jille]

I love your blog because it's the only one I know that talks about the struggle of living a more spiritual life with heart wide open and living in the world where marketing, technology, travel and innovation rule.

Your journey into the second half of life - part in the world but not of it resonates with me because it's where I am, where most of the people over 40 are.

It's re-imagining, re-inventing life in a changing, changing world and going deeper inside to find that place where we all connect

[Brett]

This blog is for humans who want to know what they don't know they've always known.
I come back each day hoping to unlearn something.

[Gordon Wyatt]

I'm a lifelong athlete, motocross, runner, canoe trips, and now mountainbiker, working in a technical capacity. I have followed a spiritual path since the 70's. I believe in doing things myself

Recently, I have been able to travel, and in my usual independant way I make my own itinerary, and avoid resorts. I stayed in contact with the people I met living on the edge of the sahara in Morocco and have ordered crafts that I sold to my friends here, to get a little cash into their hands. I sent "care" packages to a potter whose crafts don't survive the trip by mail. The tourist industry in this Islamic country has been slow since 9/11 and in a few hotels we were the only guests.

The potter asked if I could offer some kind of business opportunity and I began to wonder how to market this medieval potter whose work is cheerfully careless and utilitarian, to us North Americans. And thats how I found you. I was following a trail of ideas on marketting leading away from the cluetrain, and found a link to your site.

I stayed because I found in you a kindred spirit with skills different from mine freely sharing ideas that I find compelling and usefull.

Gord

[Francis]

I come and admire the different faces of a hasher. Oh and the whole Tsunami thing too.

On On

[Jill]

That comment above under my name is nothing like what I wrote. I can't explain what happened except that I didn't preview before posting.

I read your blog because you are struggling with what most of us over 40 struggle with. What does it mean and what does it feel like to be on a spiritual journey and yet be part of the world. How do we keep our hearts open while dealing with marketing, day to day life, technology, business and the constant changing of the world.

How do we stand for something and yet go with the flow of the world.

[Dave Pollard]

The blogosphere is a network, analagous to a transportation network, and each blog, including yours, is a node, a station that we pass through on our way to wherever we are going, or on our way home. To ask who a blog is for is like asking who a railway station is for. The difference is that the blog is a station, a stop, on an intellectual journey rather than a physical one, and offers a different type of sustenance. A blog isn't for anyONE, it is for the collective of all journeyers, it is intellectual infrastructure. It's an integral part of the whole system. If you leave for awhile to finish writing a book, the traffic all has to re-route around your 'station', new connections are made, and the whole network is changed. Why do I keep coming back? Because, for the same reason, it often just turns out to be on my route to wherever I'm going. Your blog happens to be an excellent place to refuel.

[Zane Safrit]

There are two reasons I read your posts:

TILTA-WHIRLS and PARACHUTES

TILTA-WHIRLS: Reading your posts is like riding a tilta-whirl at the circus, but in my mind. The only difference is your posts cost less, are more accessible and my view on life is pleasantly changed…for the better. And, a circus tilta-whirl is giddy-fun, but only results in lost pocket change.

PARACHUTES: Often I feel like I’m floating as on a parachute through the layers of your mind, your emotions, your life. It’s pleasant…but a little ‘exhilarating’ as you lay so much out there and leave me wondering “where she’s taking me…?” but the landing’s always soft and makes me want to come back for another ride. See above.

That's why I read your blog.