Guest post by Mark McLaren

Six Pixels of Separation: A Wake-up Call and a Road Map for Entrepreneurs and Businesses

The title of Mitch Joel’s new book, Six Pixels of Separation, is adapted from the idea of “six degrees of separation”, that each person is related to any other person through fewer than six intermediate connections: friends, relatives, acquaintances—because today all that has changed. We are all “intrinsically connected through technology, the Internet, and our mobile devices [so that we] all now live in a world where we can know everyone—and everyone can know us.”

Most of us have not quite figured out what this means—for ourselves, our families, for business, and for society generally. Fortunately, Joel has got it figured out and he shares his insights in compelling and readable fashion.

Joel is president of digital marketing and communications agency Twist Image. He began his career in communications as a writer in the music industry, with a front row seat to the changes record labels experienced during the shift to digital media. Today some labels continue to act like they will somehow regain control over how their music is distributed and what it will cost. Time to wake up, says Joel.

We are all familiar with the big stories about the spread of new media and its effect on traditional businesses. Provider of free online classified ads Craigs List is today valued at $5 billion while newspapers around the country continue to lose money or close. Traditional television programming and TV networks are also fading away.

Joel makes a convincing case that in order to thrive in the new digital economy we need to understand what is at the root of the transformation: Individuals are creating content. Individuals are the media. The media they create is also a form of advertising. What is the advertising selling? In effect, it is selling their personal brand.

Today building an online brand is something anyone can do. In fact, even if you are not online, your brand is being created for you by the search engines and by other people who are. The tools that social media superstar Chris Brogan has used to create one of the most successful online brands ever are available to everyone, and most of them are free. In this new media ecosystem, some business strategies that used to work will now lead to extinction. We can’t expect old business models – like pushing ads out to thousands of subscribers – to have the desired effect on new channels like mobile phones.

Throughout the book, Joel is careful to stress that it’s not about the tools. The tools only facilitate the transformation. We need to respond to and thrive in the human interactions, not the tools.

We can use the massive amount of content online to help us engage with our customers, not as an opportunity to sell to them, but as a way to understand them—and our own brand—better, and to move forward from there.

And Joel goes further, which is what makes the book truly useful.

In one chapter, he says, essentially: Mobile, get on it! (Is your website mobile-ready? What are you doing to prepare for the next transformation that is mobile—and a mobile/web hybrid?) [Personal interjection: He is absolutely right.]

And by my count, there are at least 15 highly instructive to-do lists with headings like:

· Six ways to build trust

· Six free online tools you should be using right now

· Personal brand audit

· What type of content should you create?

· Questions to help build your niche

· The (10) new rules of the mobile movement

…and many more.

The to-do lists alone are worth the price of the book. The fact that you will also understand why you need to do the to-do lists is a nice perk.

Mark McLaren

Mark is an online marketing consultant and owner of McBuzz Communications. He is a WordPress fanatic. Find his free WordPress tutorials here: http://mcbuzz.wordpress.com