I missed the blogpost „social media will be like air“ by Charlene Li in March. But before not mentioning it at all, I’ll rather blog about it late. The article is about the fact that social media, especially the communities/social networks that make up these media plattforms, will be be ubiquitous in a few years. The son of my boss once asked, how people managed to access the internet before computers were invented. A rather smart question, once you think about it.
In a few years kids will ask us, why we used so many different platforms to socially engage with one another online. (And why we used platforms in the first place). Similar to why they will ask us, why we needed stationary big machines with huge screens to access the internet.
So the article of Charlene Li is worth reading in any case, but there was one point that I particularly noticed:
4)A business model where social influence defines marketing value. Today’s advertising models don’t work on social networking sites – that’s because simply targeting better on profile or social graph details is still the same old media model of CPM and CPC pricing. What’s missing is marketing value based on how valuable I am in the context of my influence. For example, Steve Rubel is a highly influential person because he is an authority on social media, the people in his social graph tend to interested in his views, and they in turn have a great deal of authority as well. (Several people came up to me after the speech and said that this is similar to a „PageRank of people“, a very easy way to crystallize the idea.)
There are discussions about the future of your „typical target group“ already going on. The idea of establishing a „PageRank of people“ seems to be a viable solution. Discriminating it may be, but it provides a good indication of who to target – or should we rather call it: speak to?
The end result is that marketers will need to shift the way they approach communities. Static advertising is no longer viable. The solution is collaboration. Marketers will need to tap these emerging social operating systems to build meaningful connections through their sites and others before competitors do.
Engaging in „social networking“ with your brand/product advocates will be is a crucial part of the media mix. I just wonder, when this insight will have found its way into marketing plans of most companies?
Just found this now, even thought it was posted a few weeks ago: Mashable features a list of 15 free Social Media eBooks. I know some of them already, but it’s worth taking a look at that list. For some reason, it appears to me, that free ebooks are becoming ever more popular. Not so much as a true means of spreading knowledge, but rather as a marketing/pr instrument for individuals and companies. Don’t you think?
This one has been roaming the net in the last few days:
It has more than 2 Million views already. Who would have thought that this is actually a viral clip for Levi’s? Amazingly well done – both in terms of content as well as spreading it on the net. Who was the agency – does anyone know?
Volkswagen Germany just launched a rather unique employee contest: the scirocco song contest. Out of the ca. 100.000 Volkswagen employees, more than 100 opted in take part in the contest and sent in their version of the scirocco song. A Jury put up the best 25 songs for a vote by all web users on a voting microsite.
A pre-produced clip of what these versions could sound like:
So, click here and vote! (There even is a sweepstake!) Sorry my readers from abroad, but the site is in German…
The scirocco song was written by Leslie Mandoki – one of the most successful german producers, in Germany well known through songs like Dschinghis Khan,. But he also worked with internationally known artists like Phil Collins, denNo Angels, Jennifer Rush, Lionel Richie and German rapper Sido.
The Jury consists of Leslie Mandoki, as well as Volkswagen head of PR Stephan Grühsem, head of marketing Jochen Sengpiehl, Felix Magath and starlett Mina.
disclaimer: this is a project of my agency, in which I also take part. So far, I have not blogged about work related projects, because this blog is a hobby of mine. But I wanted this blog to support this particular project and the Volkswagen employees taking part in it…
(PS: yes, I do have a favourit, but I don’t want to influence the vote 😉 )
I should have known. The chances of having an idea first are really slim. So someone, Alister, to be precise, came up with the idea to block the URL for Marketing Meme first. A URL that could be the meme-tracker of the marketing world, just as techmeme is the meme-tracker of the technology world.
Not sure when he came up with this, of course, it doesn’t say on the site. All it says is: your vote and support is needed here. And the post behind that link was written in December of last year (so I am probably only 5 months too late – which is a decade in internet terms). Now he is asking us from the marketing community to help him to get the guys from techmeme to setup a special service for the marketing industry:
I’d be happy to see some nice ongoing volume of inbound links from SEM Search, but honestly, I’d really like to see Gabe Rivera over at techmeme.com create a “marketingmeme.com“, that removes SEM/SEO/SMO/PR/etc stuff out of techmeme and puts it under its own “engineâ€, building off, say, Lee Odden’s list, with some fuzzy logic around that, finding other on-topic blogs as well.
So if you’re interested in having such a service (I am, for sure!), go over to this site and put your vote in the comments!
Wo ich sonst so bin...