Mastering the New Media Landscape: Embrace the Micromedia Mindset
Barbara Cave Henricks and Rusty Shelton
Barrett Publishers (April 2016)

Here’s the mindset that will help create or increase demand for whatever you are marketing…including you

Years ago, Alvin Toffler observed, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ” Those who know nothing about “the new media landscape” have a significant advantage over those who think they do…but in fact don’t. That is a landscape that seems to become more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous each day. There is much to be learned, much to be unlearned, and (yes) relearned and that is why Barbara Cave Henricks and Rusty Shelton wrote this book. They want to help as many people as they can to create or increase demand for whatever they offer in categories such as products, services, ideas, associations or some combination thereof.

More specifically, they share what they have learned about subjects that include:

o The new rules of communication
o How and why those rules can change
o The opportunities in micromedia
o Discoverability and the future of marketing
o What can be learned and applied from traditional media
o The dos and don’ts of launching a speaking career

As I worked my way through Henricks and Shelton’s lively as well as informative narrative, I was again reminded of a dinner conversation I had with a prominent venture capitalist in San Francisco. When I asked how he and his associates decide which of the hundreds of applicants each month to meet with, he replied, “When we review their formal proposals, we have three questions in mind: Who are you? What do you do? and most important of all, Why should I care?”

Whatever you hope to create or increase demand for, you need to keep these three questions — and especially the third — clearly in mind.

In the final chapter, Barbara Cave Henricks and Rusty Shelton recall a film, Field of Dreams, that introduced a potentially dangerous concept: “If you build it, they will come.” It is dangerous to assume that what you have built has inherent appeal. Even if it does, it is even more dangerous to assume that’s all you need to do. Today’s consumers need to know about it. More to the point, they need to care about it. And even more to the point, they need to care about it so much that they come your “baseball park in a corn field,” wherever and whatever it may be. How to make that happen? Read and then re-read this book.