<b> Bold Interactive Inc.

This post is part of a series examining John August’s speech, The Challenge of Writing in a Digital Age.

John August had the least to offer on the subject of immediacy. This isn’t a surprise. August understands the intelligence of his audience, and we all understand the fast-paced information world in which we live.

Instead, he focused on a little talked about factor of immediacy:

I should stress, by immediacy, I’m not just talking about the news, or a sense of timeliness. There’s also immediacy in the emotional sense. A sense of intimacy. A false intimacy, an informality. If you look at writing over the last decade, it’s become much more casual. Not just grammatically, with its sloppy punctuation and really badly thought out emoticons, but tonally. Wewrite everything as if we’re writing to our very best friends, whether it’s appropriate or not.

This is a tremendous concept to keep in mind when it comes to conversation marketing and social media. Since the success of these marketing strategies depends on relationships, you need to be good at building them. You don’t want to be the guy that stands too close and invades someone’s space. You don’t want to be the girl that pretends to be cool when she’s really just insecure (guilty as charged, in my case).

It takes a keen sense of vulnerability, confidence and authenticity. But vulnerability can easily lead to co-dependence, confidence can lead to arrogance, and authenticity can lead to the divulging of too much information.

Relationships in this digital age take work. And if you don’t put forth the effort, you could lose consumers to those who do.

The only things you should follow closely are those things you find fascinating. Those things you might just be an authority on.

That’s the only way out of the trap of immediacy. Stop reading, and start writing. Be the guy who provides context, criticism, reflection. Organize your own thoughts, and help organize them for others.

I cannot stress enough how key this is. This is a smart way of saying, “Find what you’re passionate about and do it.”

It’s so easy to get distracted by people who’ve already established themselves as authorities in fields such as making money online or SEO. But the thing is - you want to make money and use SEO on sites that reflect what you’re passionate about. You must have the confidence, focus, and discipline to not be tempted into becoming the next SEO A-list blogger.

I’m not saying that it’s impossible (there’s plenty of pessimists already doing that). I’m questioning how much you really want to establish yourself as an authority on Google’s every whim, whether or not URL structures matter to the search engines, and deciding whether or not you want to hate or love Jason Calcanis.

Don’t let immediacy rob you of finding and establishing your true authority. Learn to use immediacy as a tool once you’ve figured out your passion.

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