Aug 28 2007
Breakthough Social Marketing
Here’s my list of the three most significant common factors of the great social phenomenons of recent years.
1) The originators never saw it coming
2) Very few have anything to do with marketing a business
3) They peak quickly and are then forgotten
With this in mind, the prospect of achieving success is seems daunting. If we do everything right we may achieve some level of success and maybe, if we’re very lucky, we can do something big. This makes it very difficult for ROI focused marketers to justify the effort. But every good marketer has got to swing for the fences now and then and this is as good a place as any to do it.
Social marketing has become the buzz at every conference related to internet marketing. When I attended was the Internet Retailer in San Jose, it was very interesting to find that most attendees were still more or less stumped on how to proceed. Web 2.0 is a rather unfortunate term because it seems to point us in the direction of starting with tactics such as blogs, videos, reviews, etc. If you focus on viral or word-of-mouth strategies and include off-line tactics, you’ll get there much quicker.
There are some very intelligent minds who have done a wonderful job analyzing this. Seth Godin and Andy Sernovitz are at the top of my list. Visit their blogs and read their books and you’ll have a great foundation.
