The Age of Digital Enlightenment

By Jeff Bullas

My social media manifesto.

Dreaming is fun. It takes us to distant lands, sunken treasures and turquoise lagoons. The reality of life can be suspended for moments or hours. I do believe in the saying that “without a dream the people perish”.

I have always been a dreamer.

My father called me the “absent minded professor” because I was able to see a world that didn’t exist and dream of a future that hadn’t happened.

I have been mesmerised by social media since I discovered it in 2008. In fact many of us have.

Today there is over 2 billion people on a planet from a total of 3 billion internet users who have a social media account. That tells you something about the magnetic attraction that it holds. And this has happened in just over 10 years.

We tweet, view our newsfeed Facebook stream, click likes and stream live video on Meerkat and Periscope. We have all become publishers, creators and promoters.

The reason it works is complicated but it resonates.

A global glimpse of our powerful potential

Social media allowed us to see what others are doing. We thought “I could do something like that”

The democratisation of marketing and publishing through easy to use technology put the power of ideas and creation back into the hands of the people. You and me.

It gave us a glimpse of the opportunity not limited by money or begging for attention from the incumbent leaders and gatekeepers. Possibilities were no longer pegged by power brokers. But showed us a world that could be reached and changed with persistent passionate effort.

Our real potential as humans was on display for all to see. Passionate bloggers on topics that range from fashion, makeup and food created YouTube channels that surprise and amaze us. Photographers and artists display creations that inspire us to become part of their tribe.

They make us want to contribute and leave our own legacy and dent in the universe.

But we need to accept that powerful potential. We often don’t realise what lies within us all. Maybe we are frightened by where it might take us.

“It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,

talented and fabulous?…..” – Marianne Williamson

Social media provided us with the tools and the visibility of a world we hadn’t seen before. The creativity explosion is unleashing a tidal wave of innovation and creativity that is unprecedented.

It is an age of digital enlightenment.

The global landscape has now been unlocked, visible and transparent to all with an internet connection and a computer. Then it became even more accessible when the smart phone spread from the privileged few to almost all.

Those wanting to escape poverty and an ordinary life have heroes and aspirational leaders who are showing them the way.

It amplifies our humanity

This social web technology with a simple to use interface with no manual is the “intersection of humanity and technology”. It is an extension and amplification of our uniqueness and creativity and content. It validates our creative content by quantifying attention.

We share photos of our food. bike rides and engaging experiences to a world that is watching. We monitor our contents popularity and measure its success through the “like metric”. The obsessive engagement is real. “Wow” we say,.. “look at how many shares, retweets and comments I have”.

Get a lot of likes and we think “cool, that worked”.

We then post again but the attention metric is less. We are prompted to go again. It’s a powerful motivator called “variable reward” made famous by Pavlov when he only rewarded lab animals who pushed a lever with intermittent food rewards.

It connects us to our tribes

Blogs, twitter feeds and online communities allow us to connect to our global tribes.

Connection with global communities provides insights and networks that can accelerate your learning process, opportunity and success.

Isolation is no longer constrained by physical location. Your laptop, tablet or mobile phone is your gateway to your tribe. Skype, Viber and Whatsapp connect us with rich multimedia. It doesn’t have to be a 140 character text or voice only.

Creating is where the magic happens

As humans being we are born creative. As children we dance, draw, dream and play. Then we go to school and told to color between the lines. Made to conform. For many the magic is buried in a sea of sameness.

We become afraid to stand out.

This digital playground is the blank tablet or “tabula rasa” to create your own destiny. This is opportunity on a global scale. Yet often we are locked into a local mindset.

Crafting and writing a blog is the facilitator to clear thinking and distilled thoughts. Putting your thoughts down requires learning to take the noisy cloudy neurons and produce clear thinking and structure. Researching the topic to bring more substance and insight will add more value to to what may and should become a lifetime of learning.

Make learning and creating a habit.

Putting it down in black and white produces something visible and real that before was only tiny electrical bursts in a cranium locked brain.

Doing this often will lead to true and powerful creative learning.

Try it and you will be surprised by what shows up.

It gives the introverts a voice

The system and society seems to reward the beautiful, the popular and the big extroverted personalities. It still does. But the social web has opened a big crack in the opportunity event horizon.

The quiet geeks are inheriting the earth.

Online their voice needs no longer to be drowned out by the loud. A great headline, an enticing introduction and an insight speaks louder than the extrovert.

It rewards the experimenters

Getting it wrong is no longer fatal or expensive. In a digital world you can fail more often and faster and find out what works or what doesn’t in hours rather than weeks, months or years.

Printing a book, a brochure or a manual with an error leads to expensive pulping.

You can experiment with your creations in real time and get feedback in an instant. It is accelerating success discovery. Mistakes just take us one step closer to the finding what works. It is more a journey of optimization.

Websites, software and social networks are in constant beta.

Be prepared to experiment, to test and innovate.

Done is better than perfect.

It accelerates discovery

The social web as an instant feedback loop is a game changer.

Writing that book for a traditional publisher is often a journey of years before it crafted, edited proof read and published in a physical format. The ebook without the gatekeeper can be done in months if enough focus and energy is applied.

The questions that lurk are “Will this headline work?” Is the book going to succeed?” “Will the business work?”

Online this discovery can be accelerated through technology and social networks.

It has opened up a world without borders

In the western and first world we are spoilt for opportunity.

We often don’t realise what is at our fingertips. We bitch and complain when we don’t get an aisle or window seat on a plane or have to wait a couple of minutes to be served. There are many first world problems that are not worth speaking about.

But we do.

You realise the gift we have been given and the potential for good that your digital platform to the world and social media provides when you receive emails like this:

“You have done so much for me and many other Nigerians (and Africans) who thought life had dealt us a deadly blow. Your posts give me the hope to first life, conquer fear, venture into entrepreneurship and make a name for myself in my country”.

Empowers marketers and brands

Marketing in the past was often delegated to the agency the newspaper mogul or the magazine sales person. It still is, but it is now much more fragmented. Brands are investing in technology that allows them to be in the driving seat of creation, production and analysis. The transparency of the return on investment is no longer buried in fluffy metrics.

Marketing has gone tech!

It is the democratization of marketing. Watch this space.

Rewards the publishers

Blogs are online magazines, books and resources. All rolled into one. A portal for expression, learning and publishing.

If you want to write longer form then a book is where its at. Writing and producing a book was limited to a chosen and select few. No longer.

Want to write a book. Choose yourself. Want to publish? Then outline your chapters, do the work and upload to Amazon our publish it on your own blog.

There are no longer any excuses of “I don’t have the money” or “I wasn’t invited” or even “I wasn’t chosen”

It’s time to strap yourself in and start.

Heroes and success stories

There are many bloggers and digital creatives that have been provided and embraced the digital world and the social web.

Example 1: Danny Iny

Danny Iny I met virtually online 3 years ago when he asked me to contribute to a book he was crowd sourcing. I had never heard his back story

Example 2: John Morrow

John Morrow is one of the online legends.

Example 3:

Are you ready to live to your potential?

Have you an idea you want to explore? A passion that keeps you up late at night and keeps your mind exploding with ideas and possibilities?

Then it’s time to start. To publish and share your genius with the rest of the world.

I look forward to hearing about your journey and success.

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