(image: Tommy Lee Walker /Unsplash)
C'mon, folks, let's admit that our obsession with likes and clicks is an instant gratification-driven race to the bottom.
It's important personally because each like gives us a rewarding hit of dopamine. And it's importantly professionally because those metrics are what management can see and measure and reward us on.
But ...
Let's say I write a blog about purpose, and only 3 people 'like' it. However, if one of those people who liked it are so moved they sold up their fancy home and shifted to Cambodia to fulfil their true calling of working to give orphans a better life, well, you'd have to say that that's more important than tabling "Our blog got 10,542 likes this week" at the Monday management meeting.
Especially when nobody acted on anything much, that's just empty calories.
Resonance beats Reach every time.
Every message you create should be aimed at one person, not a mass audience, because that is how messages are processed. By only one set of ears, one set of eyes at a time. One to One. Human to Human. Heart to Heart.
"The ultimate paradox of creative work is that what you create for an audience of one is much more likely to reach an audience of millions," says Srinivas Rao in An Audience of One.
It turns out that Resonance leads to Reach.
(Please don't 'like' this blog because I don't care about that.)