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Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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All the kings are dead. Long live the ecosystem.

imageThere’s an uprising taking place in the kingdom. Whoever the monarch may be, there are insurgents who would topple the throne and assume power. The ruler has it all wrong, and if only the insurgent could take charge and assert his view, peace and prosperity will reign throughout the kingdom.

It’s good to be king, we keep hearing, so everybody wants to be king:

  • Content should be king.
  • Context should be king.
  • Relationships should be king.
  • Curation should be king.
  • Search should be king.

The power struggle is enormous. It consumes blog posts, panel discussions, journal articles, hallway conversations. One blogger even devised a poll in an effort to guage sentiment among his peers.

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The debate is completely misguided.

Think about it: How many true monarchies exist in the world today. I’m not talking about countries with monarchs (there are 47 out of 195 countries). I’m talking nations ruled by a monarch. If you’re looking to wield power in England, for example, would you want to be in line for the throne or a member of Parliament?

I frequently rail against those who proclaim this or that is dead. But trust me on this: monarchies are dead. The web is no monarchy with one ring to rule them all. The web is an ecosystem. In an ecosystem, remove any one element and everything else suffers.

For the “content is king” crowd>: Great content is powerful stuff, but people have to find it, an increasingly difficult chore considering the avalanche of content that leads so many to proclaim the end is near (that is, we’re about to hit the threshhold of message meltdown or information overload). If you’ve built solid relationships, those with whom you’ve established those connections can spread the word for you, building buzz. SEO and SEM will also bring your content to the attention of the right people. Content curators who serve as trusted guides to content relevant to their audiences will separate wheat from chaff. Without these things, though, your awesome content very well may remain unnoticed, unused, ineffective.

For the “context is king” crowd: Providing context to existing content is a noble and selfless act, but let’s face it: You need content or to what would you add context? Without relationships, to whom would you direct your observations, your enhanced links, your anlayses? How would people find you to begin with? Sure, you might rely on SEO techniques, but again, without other ecosystem elements supporting your contextualizing, you’re just dead in the water.

For the “relationships are king” crowd: For months, I’ve been writing and rewriting a post about the whole idea of relationships. At its most basic level, the word embraces any state of connectedness, which leads you to wonder about the criteria you have to apply to a relationship before it rises to the value level so many people attach to it. Too many of the examples I see aren’t really relationships at all—they’re encounters. Not that there’s anything wrong with a positive, affirming encounter, but still, building a truly valuable relationship—one in which the other party will stand up for you when your chips are down—takes far more than what most organizations have shown the desire or ability to do.

But even if a true relationship is your goal, how do you establish and maintain it in the social space? Ideally, it will be with content of some kind that fulfills a need and deepens the connection. And the value of that content is directly affected by its findability and the kind of context that has been added to it, whether by a curator adding the piece to a collection, a blogger linking to or embedding the content, or commenters adding their own perspectives.

For the “curation is king” crowd—Let’s get real. I’m a huge fan of curation. I’ve been telling anyone who will listen (and more than few who won’t) that curation must become a core communication skill. I’ve undertaken some curation efforts of my own in order to learn more about it. But without content, there’s nothing to curate. Without relationships, there’s nobody to pay attention to your collection. And your collection is still just another URL, another site that needs to be discovered.

For the “search is king” crowd—What am I searching for if not content? The context of search arises from the search engine’s algorithms, which assess the meaning behind those who are linking to any given piece of content. Among media properties, there has been a shift away from search engines providing the connection between consumers and content and toward social sites; a recent study found Facebook responsible for more referrals to big media sites than Google. And as the volume of content continues to grow, people will rely more and more on curation, since the automated collection of links that define Google and other search engines won’t be able to deliver results as relevant as people focused on a niche will be able to through the use of curation tools.

My goal here is not to minimize any of these critical categories. Conversely, I hope to elevate them all to the same level—the level of interdependence. Communicators need to think about social media as the ecosystem it is, considering how each will affect the outcome of any given process, program or campaign.

Miss one and you lose.

Comments
  • 1.Nicely said! None of these things is (or should be) king. However, I believe that we should write as if our audience were king. Here are some more thoughts on the subject.

    Larry Kunz | June 2011 | North Carolina, USA

  • 2.These are very interesting comments. I had never thought of the web as an ecosystem, but after reading your article, I see that is absolutely true. I was surprised by the statistic you stated that said Facebook directed people to bigger websites more than Google. I think this fact, however, illustrates the changing nature of the internet and the way we interact with it.

    Article Marketing | June 2011 | Houston, TX

  • 3.Another thoughtful post, Shel.

    I wonder whether this is considered a challenge in cultures that value teamwork and unity over individual success.

    In the United States, we're taught to be individuals and to strive to be "the best." That puts a premium on "winning"--which might influence someone to want to be in the "right camp" following the "right king."

    Besides, if we're seen as being connected to the "right king," we might share in the spoils of the kingdom--by the halo (crown) effect.

    As you said at the beginning of your post, this debate has generated a lot of posts and articles--many by so-called "experts," "gurus," "thought leaders," etc. I suspect that many of them would benefit from a good crowning!

    Tom Keefe | June 2011 | Chicago

  • 4.Nothing is king but everything is important. The most important is innovation. We innovate to prevent that most heinous of crimes a writer can commit; to become boring.

    Mike10613 | June 2011 | England

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