Seth Godin talks about being missed in this really short post…
On being missed
Some friends moved away, and the cake at the party read, “We’ll miss you.”
Perhaps it would have been more accurate for it to say, “You’ll miss us.”
Because, after all, what’s mostly being missed is the community of friends and neighbors. Even when someone moves away, the community remains.
When a marketer serves a community, they create the conditions where they’d be missed–because the ideas or products or services they bring are important, not simply tolerated.
That’s a worthwhile goal.
I often think about my work in term of being missed.
- If I stop what I’m doing, will people notice or care?
- Are we actually doing useful things?
- What problems are we really solving?
- Would someone see it as an opportunity to fill a gap?
Will your community work be missed? If not, maybe you are spending time on the wrong things.
