Lessons as Presenter Imperatives from the Cluetrain Manifesto

If you follow people like Hugh Macleod and Robert Scoble, etc., you know that we’re living in the era of “the Cluetrain.” I first read the Cluetrain Manifesto four-five years ago. One of the central ideas in the book is this: markets are conversations and companies by a large do not get that (even if their employees do). Traditional ways of mass-media marketing need to adapt or get out of the way. The keys are presenter imperatives, aren’t they?

What Cluetrain was talking about was the change in current company-to-consumer interactions, though their emphasis was on how technology and the web, among other things, were changing this interaction in a radical way. What the Cluetrain Manifesto is saying, at its heart, is that communication matters and that the way we think about organization-to-customer communication needs to change.

It’s all communication
Websites, intranets, message boards, email blasts, blogs, developer conferences, sales presentations, and CEO keynotes — it’s about communicating. It all matters. Whether it’s a blog, an e-newsletter, or a presentation, what audiences and customers yearn for from organizations is authenticity and transparency, simplicity, and a real human, emotion-without-the-BS approach to communicating. A real conversation…for a change.

The Cluetrain tenets — the “95 Theses” at the beginning of the book — speak largely to wired communications. But it’s all communication. While the “Theses” may not…