I spent the day reading about marketing and the effects of social media on marketing and it lead me to thinking about what’s next…
Web related technology enablers such as blogs, wiki’s, and forum’s have and will continue to drawn millions of individuals into conversations and they are having a profound and exciting impact on marketing. I am convinced it is imperative that companies and organizations embrace and harness this crucial marketing channel if they are going to thrive.
Yesterday as I was reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog I came across a recent post he made of “Top 10″ marketing podcasts, so I decided to explore further. The podcasts are interviews available at www.podtech.com under marketing voices. In these podcasts, Jennifer Jones interviews various marketing leaders about why social media is important, how it is evolving, and how it has become a first class citizen in the overall marketing strategy. What’s the big deal? Its just a bunch of people rattling off their questions and opinion’s right? Well opinions and questions generate conversations and answers; conversations and answers generate friendships and happy customers; friendships and happy customers generate trust; trust generates recommendations; recommendations generate purchases. The podcasts cover a range of social media impact topics from where VC investors are putting dollars, to it’s effect on corporate culture, to how small is the new big. This last item is what intrigues me the most.
There’s an interview with with Marketing whiz Seth Godin who’s written a new book aptly titled “Small is the New Big”. Small groups are critical to the success of church’s, associations and non-profits, people, and business in general e.g. marketing. How often do people tell you to “Think small”? Never. That’s what makes this statistically improbable phrase such an attention grabber.
I got a few minutes to catch up with my brother on Friday and social medai has been on his mind as well. Software that facilitates small groups is a commodity these days: Google and Yahoo groups are the obvious biggies. The problem with those is that it’s hard for an organization to integrate them into their web site which is a necessary and crucial part of corporate identity these days. Pluck has the right idea here with their SiteLife product: offer the solutions as a service. From the marketing perspective there are a slew of benefits to opening and nurturing these conversations. Self help, customer feedback, buzz, the ability to identifying critical spokes people and advocates, the list of benefits goes on and on. But what’s next?
As we talked we came to the conclusion that one of the next stages in this arena is enabling people to participate in projects: Community action, street teams for bands, committee’s, collaborating on an itinerary for trip, pursuing business ventures, the list goes on an on. Some small groups have short half life’s, some are longer, but they are what make us move and grow. How will web technologies evolve to enable groups to get stuff done? It should be interesting.
