by: Karl Long
Hugh over at gapingvoid raises the interesting point that even though the market for companies to create and deliver one way “messages” is dissapearing, demand for PR, marketing, and advertising professionals is growing. The question is now that we don’t control the “message” what are we doing?
To quote Hugh:
1. Problem: Post-Cluetrain Reality- There is no market for “Messages”.
2. Opportunity: There is, however, a VAST market for “Social Gestures”. As Mark Earls says in his brilliant new book, “Herd”, we are, after all, social animals. We are, after all, primates.
3. Execution: Social Objects, Anybody?
I’m going to add number 4:
4. Value: Social Equity, the value you build over time from the creation of and participation with social gestures and social objects.
I’m absolutely convinced that one of the biggest differences between traditional marketing, and new conversational, people driven marketing is you actually build value over time. I think blogs are one of the best examples, every time you post to a blog it’s like making a small deposit in a bank account, each one build on the rest, and ends up returning interest that compounds. The value of a blog over time becomes more than the sum of the individual posts, as it and the author becomes interconnected through other blogs and sites.
Traditional marketing and advertising used to try and build brand equity, in the new conversational marketplace companies that are participating are building social equity (i’m sure that means something else somewhere but it seems appropriate).
What else could you call the value you build over time by participating in the O’Sphere?
Original Post: http://experiencecurve.com/archives/social-gestures-objects-and-equity
While it’s true that companies can build lots of value by participating in the “O’Sphere,”, there is also value in being the listener and seeing what others have to say in addition to participation. Companies are losing their control of the “message” and there is a lot of value in what customers are saying to each other, insights that companies will never know about unless they know how to find and listen to them. If these customer insights are aggregated and organized efficiently, the value built over time could be called an Interaction Currency or network of customer conversations and opinions.
OK, so our social lives now extend/live in a digital realm, and marketers can best access the social media user through integration/inserting added value into their behavior. Is this an isolated social channel specific tactic, or is this a greater learning around integration into new media channels as our lives shift from analog to digital?
In plain English, doesn’t this tactic provide a (dirty word) framework for activating in all emerging media?