Beginner’s mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgements and prejudices. Beginner’s mind is just present to explore and observe and see “things as-it-is.” I think of beginner’s mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. “I wonder what this is? I wonder what that is? I wonder what this means?” Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgement, just asking “what is it?” (Abbess Zenkei Blanche Hartman)

I like to consider this concept when at the very early stages of product conception and marketing brainstorming. When you’re teaching or communicating new ideas to someone, it’s easy to let your own assumptions and knowledge get in the way.

Instead, look at it from a clean slate, like a beginner (which is really hard to do). What information does my prospect need to know to make this purchase? What knowledge will I need to give my customer to help her maximize her success with my product?

Also, this is an interesting reaction to that post, albeit on a more personal (rather than marketing) level.

“We need people going into stores and seeing a book they didn’t know existed and buying it.” (Laurence J. Kirshbaum, a literary agent).

For a literary agent, this seems an awfully off-base statement. No browsing means no discovery? Weak sauce.

Recommendation engines will be to the next 50 years what browsing was to the past 50 years.

1. Finding prospects
2. Turning those prospects into customers

Facebook and Twitter, for instance, are great for finding prospects. This, I think, is well known.

What seems to be not as well known is just because you found the prospect on that platform, you do not need to convert her into a customer on that platform.

Facebook and Twitter, in my experience, suck for customer conversion. You aren’t typically in a buyer’s mindset when you’re cruising your activity stream. As a result, I avoid selling any sort of purchase because pushing someone into that mindset is very, very hard. There are just too many road blocks to bring her all the way up to that level of commitment.

However, giving me her email address is a much lower commitment.

As a result, I don’t focus my Facebook and Twitter (or most any other social media interaction) activities on scoring a sale. Instead, I give her content and tips to try to generate email signups. Once she enters my world (I’m a much better email marketer than social media marketer), I’ve got her. I know with much more precision how much she’s worth to my bottom line. I know the psychological triggers I need to hit. I am much more confident I can score the sale.

Social media marketing gets a ton of air time, but you need to understand which marketing stage it fits into. For the hookah store, they fall into the prospect-acquisition stage. All our tweeting, Facebooking, and blogging are focused on generating email signups. Then, once she’s entered our chosen world, we put on the full court press.

I think it would be wise to assess your key strengths, understand where you can best convert prospects into customers, and then decide how the different social media communities can feed into that funnel.

(Inspired by this podcast.)

According to Facebook, 0.02% of stories actually make it to the news feed, which is rather scary if you look at it as a marketer. (Ekaterina Walter)

I did not know that, but it certainly adds a caveat to the classic, “… and it’ll show up in their feed!”

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. (Michael Jordan)

It is worth remembering how much failure is often included on the road to ultimate success.

The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight. (Paulo Coelho)

On a related note: my productivity and work-happiness does seem to move with my perception of time availability.

Imagine being able to like and share not only songs on Pandora, but also stations with one click.

• Digging that Grateful Dead rendition of Desolation Row? Click and send it to your Facebook stream.
• Amazed at the string of classics coming through your Elvis station? Click and send the whole station to your stream.
• Or maybe you’re a die-hard evangelist,  you want your profile to persistently show what station/song you’re rocking to. Set the permissions in both services and boomshakalaka, 24/7 Pandora and music evangelism.

That’s cool, but here’s where it gets really interesting.

Let’s take the case of sharing a station in your stream. What if each share included all this:

• The station’s past 5 songs played. Doing so would provide a full context of the station, making it easier for friends to decide if the station is for them, and thus driving sign up or engagement rates for those who click through.
• A link for existing Pandora users to instantly add the station to their list. Music listeners are always looking to re-invigorate their tunes, and if I saw one I liked I would absolutely add it.
• Links to buy the songs listed. With all these songs now getting displayed in streams, it is only natural to offer opportunities to buy immediately. Seems like an easy revenue split for Pandora and Facebook.

You could do similar strategies for those users sharing a song or persistently displaying the current song on their profile. Quick links to jump to or add the station, buy the song, or become a Pandora user.

Obviously, I’m not entirely sure what Facebook sharing environment looks like, but this sure seems like a worthwhile experiment for both parties.

Disclosure: I unabashedly love Pandora.

Update: So it’s a little hidden, but there are a few share buttons. Facebook even lets you share the song or station. Sadly, doing so requires you to let the Pandora app access all your info, which is weak. Here’s how it looks on my profile page when I shared a song:

Pretty cool that you can play a (sadly short) preview right on the profile page. Wish the links to listen were more prominent, but this is pretty cool.

Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn’t it? It always will when you’re trying to solve problems where there are no customs yet to guide you. Maybe I can’t plead Occam’s razor; maybe I’m simply eccentric. But if I’m right about the acceleration of addictiveness, then this kind of lonely squirming to avoid it will increasingly be the fate of anyone who wants to get things done. We’ll increasingly be defined by what we say no to. (Paul Graham)

HT: Sivers.