Tag Archives: Social-Marketing

Nobody Owns the Social Media Sandbox, Especially Not PR

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

Quick Summary: My take on the PR vs marketing debate in social media circles — nobody owns the social media sandbox.

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There’s a debate going on in search, marketing and PR blogs on what is Social Media Marketing, how does it relate to Search Marketing and Social Marketing, and who owns it.

On one extreme are the SEO/ SEM experts who primarily focus on the role of social bookmarking, social news and other social networking sites in driving traffic to websites (The Search Marketing Purists) –

Social media is easy to hype because there is a lot of traffic on social media sites. But if you try to do anything with social media traffic to convert it to revenue, you will be hard-pressed — unless you are selling CPM-based advertising. (Aaron Wall)

On the other extreme are the not-for-profit social workers who primarily focus on the role of marketing in influencing social behavior and bringing about social change (The Social Marketing Purists) —

Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society. (Nedra Kline Weinreich)

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Potential Game Changer for Word-of-Mouth/ Social/ Viral Marketing: Duncan Watts Debunks Influentials & Tipping Point

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Quick Summary: Duncan Watts debunks The Influentials and The Tipping Point, but word-of-mouth/ social/ viral marketing practitioners will do well to continue to focus on the tipping point potential of influentials.

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Here’s a potential game changer for word-of-mouth/ social/ viral marketing.

Word-of-mouth/ social/ viral marketing is based on the premise, best captured in bestsellers like The Influentials and The Tipping Point, that a small cadre of well-connected people can trigger, or tip, trends. Reach the influentials and you’ll reach everyone else through them, basically for free.

Now, based on his new research, network theory scientist Duncan Watts, who is working at Yahoo! on sabbatical from Columbia University, says that this simple premise is wrong. While I’m still trying to fully understand what Watts own premise is, here is my three sentence summary of what he seems to be saying –

- Even supper-connected influentials don’t have the power to start a trend, unless the social context is anyways susceptible to the trend.

- The key, therefore, lies not in identifying influentials who will tip a trend, but in identifying trends that are ready to be tipped.

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Conversation Age E-Book: Create Conversations, Not Clutter

Friday, May 4th, 2007

The ‘Conversation Age’ e-book is a collaborative e-book project conceived by Drew Mclellan and Gavin Heaton -

- 100 authors. We’re a few but need more.
- The overriding topic is “The Conversation Age” — where you take it is up to you.
- The items are short - one 8.5″ x 11″ page — it can be words, diagrams, photos (again up to you) If it is words - about 400, give or take a couple.
- We write it quickly and get it out there. We publish electronically.
- We make it available online for a small fee and we donate 100% of the proceeds to Variety the Children’s Charity — which serves children across the entire globe.

My contribution to the e-book is a chapter titled ‘Create Conversations, Not Clutter’. Here’s a teaser excerpt from the chapter -

While all of us agree that we need to create conversations with our customers/ readers and build a community around them, most of us end up creating clutter instead of conversations. In this article, I will share with you my thoughts on creating conversations, not clutter.

For the rest of the chapter, you’ll have to wait for the e-book. :-)

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