There is a really wonderful book out called Imagine by Jonah Lehrer. Lehrer explores exactly how creativity works. What colors spark imagination? What routines kill it? Can drugs make us more creative? Or do drugs do the opposite? Are we most creative when we are well-rested or sleep-deprived? Are there different forms of creativity and imagination? The answers will surprise you, and I strongly recommend this book.

I read Imagine back early in the spring, and there was a certain chapter that really stuck with me. This one particular section inspired the idea to build a new kind of social network just for creative professionals, WANATribe. WANATribe started with a seed named “Q.” We all need the perfect about of Q for creativity to thrive. But what is it?

Different Tools for a Different Age

Modern society is growing more complex, and so are the problems. All of the low-hanging fruit is gone. The age of the lone genius has passed, and, these days, most fields require that we get better at teamwork. Even the modern day author is required to do so much more in order to survive, let alone be successful. The largest mistake I see writers and people in publishing make, is they assign writers to do all of this work alone, which is a formula for stress and burnout and rarely yields much that is remarkable

This is one of the reasons the WANA methods work. WANA is founded upon working as a team, and being part of a team holds unique advantages, namely an increase in Q. What is Q?

Patience, Grasshopper. We’ll get there.

But what its the best way to work together?

Brian Uzzi, a sociologist at Northwestern University has spent his career wanting to understand the how groups function, and, better still, how they function optimally. Why do some groups seem to fizzle? Why do others take off and push all boundaries of imagination?

Uzzi decided that the best way to understand groups was to study Broadway musicals. Why? Well, no one can do a musical alone. Musicals require perfect creative collaboration and cooperation in order to be successful. Musicians, dancers, choreographers, etc. all working together. No easy task. Uzzi quickly discovered that, “people on Broadway were part of an extremely interconnected network; it didn’t take many links to get from the librettist of Guys and Dolls to the choreographer of Cats (Lehrer, pg.141)”.

Sound familiar? *cough* Writers. The world of publishing is a small one, which is why we must be kind and professional at all times (aside from it being the right thing to do). Publishing is a small world and we are all connected. Now, the density of the connection will all differ and this is known as Q.

Low Q? No one knows each other very well. High Q? We all know each other like we know ourselves. We might even finish each other’s sentences and we know all the little quirks and habits.

What Uzzi noticed was that, in the 1920s, there were all these collaborations from some of the greatest minds in the business, and yet they produced a string of tired, mediocre musicals. What happened?

Q

What Uzzi soon discovered was that, for maximum creativity, we needed to maintain Ideal Q. If the Q is too low? Everyone is afraid to talk to each other, there is little exchange of ideas and so nothing happens. Ah, but if the Q is too high, we get groupthink and there is no fresh innovation. I feel this has been one of the biggest problems in all the creative industries that have fallen under the tidal wave of digital.

The music business and the film business were stuffed full of people who had all worked in the same industry for years, with the same people, and so they couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The Big Six has yet to learn from music and film. Why? Because they have too high of Q. They have too many people who’ve been in the same industry with the same business model and they are suffering because of groupthink. To remain relevant, they will need to up their Q.

People will always want paper.

Yeah.

So what does this have to do with WANA?

WANATribe and Perfect Q

When I teach my blogging classes, I don’t teach writers how to blog and then throw them out in the digital ocean to sink or swim. I know that to survive in this Brave New World we must work together or fail alone. Yet, I watched this Q component time and time again. I would put together a blogging class into a private Facebook group where they could get to know one another, follow each other, and trade ideas, assistance and recipes for Kamakazis.

At first, there would be very little interaction and nothing would happen. *insert sound of crickets* Low Q. Ah, but then the Chatty Cathys would start getting people to talk, and then there would be this BOOM! of creativity. Some of the best ideas always came from this phase of Ideal Q.

But then what would happen?

The group would get comfortable in their tribe. They would hang out in the private Facebook group instead of getting out and mingling with new people, and this is when I would start seeing people hit a wall. The creativity would taper off and with it, the ideas and enthusiasm. This presented a challenge.

How could I create an environment where we could always maintain Ideal Q?

Then it hit me. We needed our own social network. So long as we were on Facebook or Twitter, it was too easy to just get comfortable with our own peeps. It wasn’t very easy to get out and meet people with enough in common to form instant rapport. Face it, when we sign up for Facebook what does it ask us to do? Invite existing friends. Import our e-mail addresses and invite people we already know.

But how do we meet the ones we don’t know? THAT has always been the problem.

Yet, in WANATribe, we are surrounded by people we might not know, but with whom we have common interests. We at WANATribe are working to perfect the group. We go beyond the group to the TRIBE—the original social network. Start a tribe, join a tribe or even drift between tribes.

Writers are more than all-writing-all-the-time, so there are even some tribes based off interest like Patrick Thunstrom’s WANA Nerdfighters. If you don’t see a tribe that suits your needs? Start one. Invite friends. Tribes change how we connect. It means we can get to know each other, but yet always have an infusion of fresh ideas, new people with new insight. Thus, the odds we will keep Ideal Q greatly improve.

“We need structure, or everything falls apart. But we also need spaces that surprise us. Because it is the exchanges we don’t expect, with the people we just met, that will change the way we think about everything.” Lehrer, Pg, 156.

WANATribe offers that environment that isn’t fully predictable nor fully chaotic, either. We strive to offer the structure, yet the space for surprise.

Write Woman’s Fiction? Pop into a Historical Fiction tribe. Write Historical Romance? Pop into the Paranormal Club. Get out of the comfort zone. Bring new ideas to them and gain new ideas and perspectives in return. Want to collaborate? Create a private tribe. The possibilities are endless. Now you don’t have to live in a major city to find the perfect writing group. Create one. Want to learn about the industry? Join an industry tribe. We have an Indie Tribe and a Self-Publishing Tribe. We have a Writing While Parenting Tribe. Or go mingle with other types of artists and join a Photography Tribe or a Cartooning Tribe.

WANATribe is one giant digital playground for creative people. Grab your Crayons and glue sticks. Bring your GI Joes and Barbies and we’ll all hang out until the streetlights come on. There is a good reason why children have such active imaginations. They play. They always meet new kids. So come on! What are you waiting for? I look forward to seeing all of you at WANATribe. Bring your peeps. The more the weirder…um, merrier. Come get your Q on! Here is an invitation.

So what are your thoughts? Do you find your trusted critique group gets in a rut? Do you find it is hard to meet new people? What have been your biggest challenges with staying creative? Do you find being around other creative people inspires you?

I love hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of June, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

***Changing the contest.

It is a lot of work to pick the winners each week. Not that you guys aren’t totally worth it, but with the launch of WANA International and WANATribe I need to streamline. So I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

And also, winners will now have one business week  (5 days) to claim the prize, because what’s happening is there are actually quite a few people who never claim the critique, so I never know if the spam folder ate it or to look for it and then people miss out. I will also give my corporate e-mail to insure we connect and I will only have a week to return the 20 page edit.

At the end of June I will pick a winner for the monthly prize. Good luck!

I also hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in the biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left to write great books.

The post Maximizing Our Creativity–The Transformative Power of Q appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Author Piper Bayard and I are “WINNING!” Foxy with Moxie at DFW Con 2012

Last week we talked about some changes with Facebook. Can they now hold our fan pages hostage? Now that the giant is a publicly traded company, we just should expect that they are going to look for ways to generate profits for shareholders. This doesn’t make Facebook evil. It isn’t personal. It’s just business.

I am very careful to not be too indignant, because what did I expect for free?

Last week, I mentioned how fan page holders could expect to show up in the feeds of only about 10-15% of their fans. But, Facebook is now offering a promotion service to make sure your posts show up in all our fans’ feeds. And, the price per post, from what I have seen, ain’t cheap. Some fan page owners were looking at $300 or even $500 per post.

Remember, Facebook is only sharing posts with fans who repeatedly return to your page, post on your page, comment on your page, or otherwise engage on your fan page.

I am hesitant to charge Facebook with doing anything nefarious. I watch how many fan page holders use their pages, and a 10-15% ROI is actually not bad. I know we would all love to believe that when people “Like” our page, that they are hanging off every word, every announcement, and every post. But, the sad truth is they likely aren’t.

A World of Invisible

We have created a world where mass marketing is powerless and most products are invisible. Technology has fragmented the marketplace, which means that modern consumers are inundated with choices.. We no longer live in a world with three major television networks who control the lion’s share of content.

We have hundreds of channels and Internet and blogs and You Tube and dozens of additional social sites to tickle our collective fancies. These days consumers can focus on what they want and then ignore the rest.

Exposure Doesn’t Mean What It Used To

I’m always seeing these marketing companies offering ways for authors to have some “exposure,” but in a world where most ads are invisible, what real use is this? I’m not saying exposure is worthless, but it certainly doesn’t have the impact it did in the Golden Age of Advertising.

The TV-industrial complex is hemorrhaging, and most marketers don’t have a clue what to do about it. Every day companies spend millions to recreate the glory days of the TV-industrial complex, and every day they fail.

         ~Seth Godin, Purple Cow–Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Exposure used to be all we needed to catapult over the competition. We just needed the right ad in the right magazine. The right commercial at the right time on the right network.

Of course this was before the day of DVRs, The Power of the Four Arrows, and Sirius radio.

A Quick Survey

How many of you have ever clicked on an ad on Facebook or some other social site? Now, of those ads you clicked on, how many of those translated into a sale? When you look at your purchasing habits as a whole, what percentage has been influenced by interruption marketing? How many books have you bought from authors who tweet:

Title of MY Book. Rated best book of the year by ME and fans you’ve never heard of. Buy NOW! Only 99 cents #fiction #freebooks #Iamseriouslyannoying #Ilovespam #sales #memememememememememe #lookatme #allaboutme #buymystuff

Yeah, me neither.

Facebook is Feeding the Delusion

Facebook is charging to make sure our posts come up in the feeds of all of our followers. Okay. All this means is that Facebook, for a fee, will guarantee that all our fans will see what we post…not just the vested ones. But, in a world where most advertising is invisible, does this do us any good?

I think it might do some good for the large companies/brands like Coca Cola or Colgate. I mean, we need to give them a break. Newspapers are going under and most of us throw away our mailers before we ever take a look. We use the Power of the Four Arrows to zoom by their television ads.

Let’s face it, they are running out of places where they can tell us about their products. Yet, here is the deal, most of those products or companies who would find the new FB service helpful?

They are already brands. They aren’t going anywhere. They are using advertising merely to maintain their market supremacy, and they have multimillion dollar budgets to fuel this.

Millions of Americans are going to buy Tide and Kleenex whether we see an ad or not. Proctor and Gamble is not going anywhere. These guys entrenched themselves back in the Golden Age of Advertising, and start-ups would be INSANE to try and go against them on their own terms. When was the last time you saw a T.V. ad for a detergent that was totally new and NOT part of an established mega-brand like P&G?

You haven’t.

The big guys have the ground and they have the budget to use Facebook in ways the new and upcoming competition cannot. Facebook is a way of maintaining what they have in the market.

In fact, want a real dose of reality?

Interbrand values the top 100 brands in the world every year. When we look at the 2011 report of the top 100 global brands, most of them are brands that were relevant 30 years ago back when heavy TV ads and magazine campaigns worked. Of the top 100, maybe 25% were built by harnessing word of mouth and generating a grassroots campaign. (I learned about Interbrand via Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. Great book that I HIGHLY recommend).

Writers would be wise to pay attention.

Artists are Entrepreneurs

Here is the deal. Artists are entrepreneurs. Writers, especially self-published and indie published authors are small businesses. We can’t use the same tactics as Phillip Morris and have success. Frankly, we never could.

When we rely on paid advertising, we are hoping for an easy way out that takes away accountability for failure. It is easier to throw a couple thousand dollars at buying Facebook advertising than it is to get in the trenches and create relationships.

Is Facebook Really Up to No Good?

I don’t believe Facebook is hiding anyone’s feeds, but since I don’t work there, I can’t be sure. I know that some authors have been complaining that their posts seemed to be disappearing into the ether and that fans were having a hard time finding them. This very well could be the case.

Facebook could be manipulating the data and hoping we pay money to get back in front of our fans. Thing is, Facebook is free and they can do what they want, so it is difficult to complain. Even if they aren’t doing this now, we should anticipate and plan for a day that they will juke the stats to make a buck.

***Note: I might recommend that you sign up for WANATribe, the new social site for creative professionals. No ads, bots, spammers or friend limits. Also, you can customize your page to be as unique as you. We aren’t trying to be Facebook. We’re very niche. We want a fun place for creative people to hang out, network, make friends and build a community of like-minded professionals. We are not alone!

Tactics that Work in the Modern Age

My goal has always been to help creative professionals, primarily writers, understand that they cannot use the same tools as Proctor & Gamble. Mass advertising and relying on fan page ads works for Target, but not for us. There are many ways that we can build a thriving, vested community to support our goals and careers, but here are five of my favorites.

1. Be Remarkable with Your Product

This is one of the reasons I blog about craft. Good books generate buzz that can’t be bought. These days everyone can be published, so we need to be better than the competition.

At WANA International, we bring the top teachers in the industry to help you take your writing from good to outstanding. Invest in yourself, your business and your future. NY Times Best-Selling Author Shirley Jump is teaching The Basics of Scene & Sequel  and Plotting with Paper Bags this month for WANA. The author of the Digital Age has to write better, cleaner and faster. We offer classes to help you up your game.

2. Reach for Everyone and We Reach No One

Mass marketing doesn’t work, but these days it doesn’t have to. We don’t need to reach all the people, just the right people. A dedicated group of hardcore fans are worth more than all the advertising dollars in the world. In fact Kevin Kelly asserted that all an artist needed to make a good living was 1,000 True Fans.

WANA methods and a blog are the best ways to locate and nurture that critical 1000. In fact, this is one of the reasons I push authors learning how to blog. We have the power to create that base of 1,000 True Fans before our book is even ready for purchase.

3. Use a blog to build/fuel a grassroots movement for you as an author brand.

WANA methods have been responsible for launching authors from total obscurity to success. A fan page is powerful, but paired with a great blog? You won’t need to pay Facebook to put your posts in your fans’ feeds because your fans will be vested. They will come to you. And, if Facebook goes crazy and implodes? Your blog is yours and your fan base will remain in tact. Your 1,000 True Fans will follow wherever you go.

4. Be genuinely interested in service.

Serve first. Talk to people. Interact. Stop marketing and STOP SELLING. I love the #MyWANA group on Twitter. I love it when I see true WANAs talking and helping one another. I know those people will have all the help they need when it comes time to promote their books. The same goes for Facebook. Comment on other people’s pages. Be interested in other people.

I take regular breaks throughout the day and I scan down the home feed on Facebook and look for ways that I can interact, serve, compliment or encourage. Genuine kindness is so rare, and people are so hungry for it, that they remember it and look for ways to repay in kind.

5. Be different.

If everyone else is doing something, then it has already become invisible. One thing I teach in my classes is how to use our artist imagination to be remarkable even in our social media. My Blogging for Author Brand class will be starting tomorrow, so I hope to see you in class. You can sign up here.

If you want to know a little more before making a decision on what class is right for you, I am giving a free webinar tonight at 7:00 p.m. CST. Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World. Sign up asap because slots are limited. I look forward to seeing you guys tonight.

Facebook has almost a billion members. They are valuable, but Facebook advertising (like all advertising) is virtually invisible to the modern consumer. When we understand that hard truth and focus, instead, on people, we have more impact and are far more resilient to change.

What are your thoughts? Is Facebook too big? What are your favorite parts of social media? What are your pet peeves?

I love hearing from you!

The post Standing Out in an a World of Invisible—Does Advertising and Marketing Still Work? appeared first on Kristen Lamb.