The Philosophical Comparison Between Marketing and Social Media
There can be a correlation drawn between the changes in the philosophy of marketing and the philosophy of social media. From push to pull, bomber tactics to niche groups, they relate more than we know.
The Social Media world has been slowly switching from a single massive community to a niche community with a smaller membership status.
Myspace and Friendster blew up on the scene as massive social networks with the potential of connecting to hundreds of thousands of people. The best part about the massive networks was you weren’t limited to location to find “friends.”
With the advent of Facebook we saw the social media community moved to more of a nice, locale based system. You were catering to a friend base that may already exist in a specific geographic or social region. Facebook moved to a social interactive platform rather than a massive social community spread over a huge land base.
Now we have seen the power of NING unleashed upon the Internet world. With the introductions of NING came other sites like grou.ps. NING gave any layman the ability to create a very specific and niche social networks based around group specific ideas. Let’s say you were in a biking accident in Colorado. Try NING, I’m sure you will have a home.
Facebook has become increasingly more niche focused with application development and demographic/geographic targeted advertising. My definition of geographic would be the relation to a friend or connection. More often than not, they are in the same geographic location.
The philosophy behind marketing has moved in the same focus. What was once a bomber approach mentality of hitting as many people as possible to gain a sale. Is now switching to a more personal and direct market approach. We are not pushing a sales message at a demographic. We are now designing niche messages and a targeted story to PULL people toward us. Sell people on our offering.
Social media has followed the same path. Moving from a massive, no holds barred, network to a more niche community based system.
What is next? We have had discussion on Smaller Indiana around the concept of Web 3.0. What does Web 3.0 look to you? Is there a web 3.0? Maybe not.
The Web Doesn’t Care About You
Seth Godin has an amazing post, yet again. He never ceases to amaze.
In the past when an information medium was invented it was built by marketing. Advertising has supported every information medium since the inception of radio, newspapers, and television. When a specific medium was invented marketers asked the question. “How does this help me?”
Seth Godin adds to this by saying:
If a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station doesn’t please advertisers, it disappears. It exists to make you (the marketer) happy.
The problem, nay the beauty, of the Internet is the fact the shameless advertising does not support this medium of communication. But (being a marketer myself) it begs the question, “How do I use this medium to help my business?”
The question Seth Going asks, which business owners should ask themselves is this:
“How are people (the people I need to reach, interact with and tell stories to) going to use this new power and how can I help them achieve their goals?”
Help your clients first and you will reap the benefits of the amazing power of the Internet.
How to be Productive with Social Media!
Lifehacker had a great post where they interviewed social media expert, Steve Rubel. Steve had three steps to making social productive, I have outlined them below and added a couple of my own.
Step 1: Set A North Star
(Keep it real and be honest. Why are you using social media? Apply social media to reach your goals. How can you use it to accomplish your goals?)
Step 2: Apply the Pareto Principle
(80% of the value comes form 20% of the content. Use tools to aggregate great content and make the most of your time spent using social media)
Step 3: Face-to-Face Newton
(Make time for being social. Face-to-Face Interaction)
Steve Rubel makes some great points in the interview. I thought I would add a couple of points that helps me stay productive in the Social Media world.
Step 1: Use the 4-Points Model
When using social media you should keep in mind the 4-points model. There are 4 points social media applications should touch in regards to your daily life: Business, Local Business Networking, Social, and Information. Choose four main networks where you spend the most of your time.
I use LinkedIn for business applications, Smaller Indiana for local business networking, Facebook for social application, and FriendFeed for information. LinkedIn can be described as my connection rolodex. Facebook is to keep me updated on my friends and acquaintances from college and high school. FriendFeed is a wonderful information aggregation tool where you can follow influential people and the information they share. Smaller Indiana is a great place to connect to local professionals and share ideas on how to make Indiana a better place.
Step 2: Commit Yourself
You get what you put in. How many times have we heard that? When using social media commit to a set amount of time a week to using your applications. You will find yourself spending to much time on your applications if you fail to designate a certain amount during the week.
I try to designate an hour of each day to information sharing (writing blogs, commenting on blogs, perusing my Google Reader) and an hour a day to using my other networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Smaller Indiana).
Step 3: Be Authentic
I get numerous e-newsletter in my inbox everyday, most of them vary from mundane to outright boring. When posting on your social media applications, try to add some authenticity and personality to the information you are sharing. When I am reading blogs and posts on social applications the last thing I want to read is an impersonal e-newsletter. I want to know that the keystrokes behind the information is an actual person. Be personal. Be Authentic.
There are the three steps I use to get the most out of Social Media. Cheers!
Screw OpenID. Screw It.
I am impatient.
I am a millennial that gets pissed off when something takes longer than 5 minutes to figure out.
You can call me an idiot. You can call me an OPENID hater. That’s fine because, at the moment, it’s true.
Whether or not there is an easier way around the OpenID comment feature on the Google/Blogger platform it doesn’t matter to me. I couldn’t figure it out. Chalk it up to being 12:00am at night or maybe it is because I have a splitting headache.
I have been attempting to post a comment on Anthony Juliano’s post, “Two Great Reminders of What Works.” Good post Anthony! I scrolled down the page and clicked “Post a Comment.” I wrote the comment and scrolled down again. It asked for my Google/Blogger name or an OpenID login.
“Well, I don’t have an OpenID login name… Maybe I should create one.”
After 5 minutes of scrolling through the OpenID site and then scrolling through the ClaimID.com site. I still didn’t have it figured out.
Why can’t things be simple?
Write the comment.
Post the comment.
I would then bask in the glory of another successful attempt at providing content/comments on the web.
Call me impatient. I just wanted to post the comment.
I will still read Anthony’s blog because I like it.
Microblogging=Money? Assetbar Thinks So.
Major props to Louis Gray for cluing me into a new development in the world of making money on the Internet. In his post titled Assetbar Launches Fanflow for Premium Messaging and Content, Gray talks about a new service offered from Assetbar called FanFlow. Long story short, it allows for the monetization of content from the developer to the reader.
There has been major strides in growing content on the Internet. Information is shared and updated by the second on millions and millions of pages. We have a way to create the content (ie Google Reader ) but we do not have a way to sell the content. I agree with Louis when he says:
One of the major issues hindering the growth of many Web services today is that users are not willing to pay. We don’t want to pay for using their service, we don’t want to pay for content, and we usually don’t want to see or click through ads.
I see it daily when it comes to growing social networks. Many people choose not to spend time developing content on social networks because they cannot place any value on the time they spend developing profiles and content on networks. When I am out talking up a new network or a new development project I usually get the response:
My time is worth (some dollar amount). I don’t have the time to spend joining and developing sites like Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Smaller Indiana, and Plaxo. How can I place a value on something so intangible?
Visibility is king for me when it comes to creating content and joining multiple networks. Though I have recently been conscious about how much of my time I spend on sites that do not create added value to my pocketbook.
Have we reached a breaking point on the Internet? Has growth been hindered because of the amount of time needed to spend on developing content doesn’t pay out?
Has Assetbar created a means to place a monetary value on time and effort in creating content? I think so. I am interested in seeing the development play out.
Do It Well OR Do Nothing At All.
As business owners, salesmen, and entrepreneurs we are inundated daily with worthless marketing material. We may even have some worthless marketing material ourselves. Pages of mindless jargon thrown on a page because we feel the need to fill something. We feel the need to GIVE away something. What is worthless marketing material?
A. If you used Microsoft Publisher to design your brochure or sales piece.
B. You have placed a 13 page book on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper
C. You have written a page about YOURSELF and your company and placed it in your sales brochure.
There are many, many other things that make marketing material worthless. Seth Godin has a great example of crappy design and marketing in his blog Silence is a Virtue. He makes the point that sometimes silence is better than creating something that makes you look cheap and amateur. In the world of marketing and authentic communication between client and company, sometimes it is better to be quiet than handing out worthless marketing material to the masses.
Quit kidding yourself. We know you didn’t spend ANY money on it. You designed it yourself. You wrote the copy yourself and it is terrible.
There are plenty of companies out there who do great marketing. Find one.
1. Make sure you can afford the cost of the professional creating your marketing pieces. Truly afford the cost of marketing material. If you can’t justify the cost, the last thing you need to do is sit down at word or publisher and create one yourself.
2. Hire a professional. Unless you are Seth Godin, in that case you can pay yourself untold amounts of wealth. Seth Godin
Firefox 3. Burn baby, BURN!
I downloaded the new Firefox 3 yesterday and I have to say, I like it already! I haven’t had the time to really dive into the application to discover all the cool app stuff but overall I am pretty happy.
The new browser is faster and sleeker and I’m always a fan of custom skins. 
I would encourage everyone to go download the browser. We all know the PC users of the world need to discover the Firefox POWER! If not, go hunker down in your Internet Explorer world and rot.
Cheers!
Small Pox and Smaller Indiana
Seth Godin has another great blog on gimmicks. I didn’t pull much from the actual blog pertaining to gimmicks but he had a great thought at the end:
As you sit down to consider ways to be more remarkable, the challenge is to be worth talking about… at the same time you are adding value for the person who’s talking about you.
I encourage all members in Smaller Indiana to invent your “gimmick” for Smaller Indiana. Does it add value when you are virally spreading? What will it take to create a Smaller Indiana that is worth spreading like an epidemic from city to city? Are we already there?
I will leave you with this:
I was playing Oregon Trail on Facebook and well, I died from a virus (my body was probably eaten by a pack of ravenous wolves but that is beside the point). It made me chuckle and ponder on how a virus spreads and infects.
And much like a small pox outbreak on Oregon Trail, Smaller Indiana is turning into a virus.
Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit.
I wrote last about the American Gladiators show, but I did make a comment about a Cadillac commercial being on during the show and right after a WWE commercial. Are you missing your demographic Caddy?
Even though I didn’t agree with that particular placement, I absolutely love the new marketing campaign from (insert Ad company). It looks to me as if Cadillac is trying to reinvent itself to a younger generation and demographic. It no longer wants to be grandpa’s luxury card you rode to church of the weekends. The reinvention of Cadillac is succeeding in my opinion and the tag line is genius.
I can’t tell you how much I love this tagline. Everything about it is a good thing. Way to take an old saying and make it new again caddy! You are catering to the old and the new.
Dumbing Down America. The Gladiators.
Who was a huge fan of the old school American Gladiators show on TV? THIS GUY! Yah that’s right, I used to love watching the matches between competitors and the unstoppable, iron fisted gladiators. You could imagine my intense pleasure when I read that a NEW American Gladiators was going to be released onto the American TV Screens. I can’t explain to you the excitement I had to be able to watch my beloved Gladiators again.
I sat down last night with some popcorn, friends, and a bottle of Upland Beer (BUY IT, it is from a brewery in
Long story short, American Gladiators was absolutely terrible. It was over produced and after the corniness factor I had more popcorn than I had started with.
What is happening to American entertainment? From the flopped broadcast or the Grammy Awards to the horrible CaveMan TV show, I feel like we becoming a Ray Liotta in the Silence of The Lambs 2 when Anthony Hopkins eats some of his brain.
Also, there was a Cadillac commercial right after the WWE. Enough said. Get a new VP of Marketing but keep your AD company because those commercials are amazing.
This is Ryan Seacrest, signing out.