This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. In today’s information-overloaded culture, attention is the most valuable commodity you can have. Umair Haque (Bubblegeneration):
"Across consumer markets, attention is becoming the scarcest – and so
most strategically vital – resource in the value chain. Attention
scarcity is fundamentally reshaping the economics of most industries it
touches; beginning with the media industry."
Attention has always been a hot commodity. That’s why companies have been paying millions of dollars for 30 seconds of air time during the Super Bowl for several years. It’s even more of commodity nowadays. Especially when you consider the micro-media explosion that’s happened with blogs, podcasting and (most recently) vidcasting.
The real question is what comes first; a strong brand or attention? When Seth Godin writes something on his blog, there are hundreds of thousands of people already paying attention. They’re waiting for the next words of wisdom to flow from his mouth. That’s why he’s consistently in Technorati’s Top 100 most popular blogs. He has a strong brand.
Yet, you take a relatively unknown guy like Dane Carlson (no offense Dane) who recently made his way to number 7 (temporarily) on that same list. How did he manage to gain so much attention; if only temporarily? More importantly, how do you sustain that sort of attention? How do we as savvy solopreneurs overcome the disadvantage of limited resources (relative to big companies)? I don’t know about you, but I don’t anticipate buying a Super Bowl ad any time soon.