Social Media: Passing Fad or For Real?
Posted by Randy Wadle on Wed, Sep 09, 2009 @ 12:52 AM
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you have heard and read a lot about "social media", "Web 2.0" and "inbound marketing" lately. To understand this stuff, you have to understand the language. But there's a catch, the language and rules are re-invented almost daily by literally millions of world wide bloggers, twitterers, Facebook friends, and YouTubers.
This new information culture is evolving at a pace that is staggering. Knowledge workers today are expected to process more information in a week that a citizen in the 19th century would be exposed to in a lifetime. Not surprisingly, our attention span has become extremely short. If we don't get the point of a message in the first few words (140 characters is the de facto standard brought on by twitter), we move on. We have become "bold readers" trying to quickly gauge the content of a message by piecing together a few bold-faced words to determine if an article is worth the investment of a few minutes of our time. Our brains are struggling to evolve/rewire to be able to compete in this new age of information overload. With the explosion of blogs, social networks, podcasts, and other easy to publish content available on the Internet, this "problem" will only magnify.
Advertisers are having to work harder and harder to get a tiny piece of the crowded mindshare for potential buyers. Remember the days when you actually watched "it's the real thing" commercials and went the fridge for a Coke? As a kid were you proud that you knew what was in a Big Mac? Today, with streaming videos of popular TV shows, TiVo, YouTube.com, Hulu.com, advertisers had better get into a consumer's brain before they learn how to use the TiVo remote control or the laptop mouse because no one has time to let the advertiser's content "push" their way into their brains. There are far too many other sources of information that that are of interest to them available within a few clicks of the remote or mouse.
This stuff certainly smells a bit like the latest trend huh? Probably a similar attitude to a lot of business owners and executives when this new fangled thing called the world wide web was born in the early 90s. Watch this video to see the pace of adoption of social media. You can't afford to ignore this revolutionary trend if you wish to reach the sophisticated, web 2.0 savvy, global consumer. These consumers, individuals and businesses alike, understand how to sweet talk Google to get what they want. They rely on tweets, blogs, and friend feeds to guide their decision making. They trust traditional forms of marketing and advertising less and less and rely on media that makes investments in many traditional types marketing largely a waste of time, money, and bytes.
The interesting element to this new age of information is that there amongst the endless meaningless chatter, there are articles that seem to be written specifically for my needs; creative art and literature that would have never been found; explosive collaborative scientific progress that would never have been discovered; a link back to family or friends that I have not heard from for decades. If we can just sort through the mess, there is powerful knowledge, life changing relationships, and experienced wisdom in there somewhere.
So what is the answer to the dilemma for business? You need to get your message to potential buyers but the traditional methods no longer work. This is where terms like "inbound marketing", "social networking", and "peer-to-peer networking" come in.
Internet search portals (Google and others) have been around for a while. But with the advancement in technology and increased consumer awareness on how to use these tools, these search engines have become THE PRIMARY SOURCE for a potential buyer to learn about your products and services; and much of what they learn is NOT from your corporate website. Nothing will ever replace the importance of a relationship on many types of sales. However, ask yourself this question...in the last year, how many significant purchases have you made without "googling" the company, the owners of the company, the salesperson that initially contacted you. You probably searched blogs and message boards for buyer content on their experience with the company or its products. Maybe you searched for competitive products and services to determine if you are getting a good deal. In fact, it's not unlikely that you have viewed the salesman's Facebook and LinkedIn profile, know the finish time of their last 5K, and have checked out their grandmother's 90th birthday party photo album. You learned all this by typing their name, and maybe their company name, into "google" and clicking search. No, you are not the only one out there that does that...well maybe I'm the only one that checks the 5K times but you get the point. Potential buyers know how to find things that they are looking to buy on the Internet. If you aren't on the radar when they are looking, you are missing the majority of the ready to purchase buyers.
Even with these powerful search engines, potential buyers take Joe Cocker's advice to determine what is worthy of spending a moment of their miniscule attention span. Consumers depend on friends, family, and business colleagues to "bubble up" what they should care about. These individuals are connected in social networks and communicate with each other in short bursts of consciousness that can only be deciphered by those that know each other personally. In many cases, a well connected close friend or trusted business colleague can spread the word about your awesome product or service far more effectively to potential buyers than an expensive newspaper or TV advertising campaign.
But the key to being successful with either of these intiatives (Internet search or social networking) is to provide interesting information to be consumed. Well placed and targeted content is essential to draw potential buyers to your website ("inbound marketing"). This can be achieved by creating new content using blogs and web content management systems or by being an active contributor with thoughtful insight and comments on blogs and content that others produce. Really both of these strategies should be considered and become part of the daily/weekly routine for your marketing department (and ideally all of your capable staff). Blogging systems and sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook make it very easy to share things that are of interest to you with those you are connected with. The more useful content your company or people are associated with, the more eyes are learning about your products and services.
Tweet you again soon...
Randy Wadle
rwadle@netwisetech.com
(866) 474-0922 x701
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