A New Generation Marketer

Five years ago you would never have had access to as much information as you do today. Now the question arises, “Is there too much information available at my fingertips?”

You might not have thought twice about the slow yet apparent increase of information that is available on the web until now. In fact, I hardly thought much into it until I read this article.

The upside to the matter is that no longer do you have to dig through a book, purchase a $500 research report or conduct a focus group to gain information that seems quite simple to obtain today.

On the other hand, our eyes are glazing over so much of this information that we are becoming far less able to soak in pages of data and would rather read quick snippets of information from article titles. For example, say you conduct a Google search for “Percentage of businesses on Twitter.” You might get a great result from eMarketer offering an extensive three to ten page report all about this. But do you choose it? Probably not. Instead, you take in what the title says, “Study finds 56% of businesses use Twitter” and do a quick scan of the first few paragraphs.

This demonstrates the inability and time deficiency that we have to sit down and read a real report anymore. Our depth of knowledge is limited but our breadth is expanding. We are now taking in more types of data but at a shallower level. Many psychologists and scientists question if this will in turn make us more stupid.

They worry that we will not be able to think deeply and thoughtfully into any one topic anymore. While we may be well versed in many topics, what does that do when we are asked to go into detail on a particular subject and can’t?

This debate boils down to focus vs. plethora of information. I stand on the fence about the issue but would have to lean in the direction of saying that in general it will be a good thing. I believe that the more well versed a person is in the world on many different topics, the better off they will be. This is not to say you should know a little about biology, green energy, social media marketing, architecture and pollution, but that you should have a broad focus on a particular industry or topic and take in bits and pieces of data all over about that.

For example, my specialty is high tech internet marketing. Do I read intensive reports on this regularly? Nope. Instead, I set up Google Alerts, subscribe to about twenty blogs, follow around 350 people that are tech and marketing related on Twitter and watch videos related to these subjects. This gives me an expansive and thorough understanding of the general state of Internet marketing. Instead of honing in on one very particular part of my speciality, I like to use the plethora of data to my advantage by expanding my knowledge and expertise to a more general category.

A few months ago I wrote a post titled ‘Information Overload or Filter Failure’ which discussed that maybe we are just having trouble creating our own data filters in our minds. To combat this, pick out particular topics you want to be aware of while scanning the web. While scanning through your Google Reader, email and Twitter feed, act as a keyword catcher and focus on picking up only articles related to those. Don’t let the data explosion overtake your whole Internet experience and let it ‘dumb you down’ as experts are calling it.

As a tip, I try to read a book a month to allow myself to not become too entrenched in only learning from what the Internet has to teach me. I also do this to be able to immerse myself into a longer story and focus on reading hundreds of pages of the same piece rather than snippets. I have realized recently that this has been a bit of a struggle to do since I read so much online now, but I am sticking to my mission to do this and it definitely helps. Try that out too and let me know if it works!

How do you react to this issue? Do you feel dumbed down by the Internet or do you think it can provide us with an opportunity? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below!

You might also want to follow me on Twitter to learn more @kristinedziadul.