With all of the hype around Social Media/Marketing, it’s easy to forget one thing.
The benefits of social media is the effect, not the cause.
Let’s look at the underlying assumption for success in The Attention Economy.
- Do Something Worth Talking About (Word-of-Mouth, aka WOM)
- Make it easy for people to tell their friends about it. (leverage social media)
Note: Seth and Andy are the sources of these key success criteria.
So, what does that mean?
It means that before you start thinking about blogs, Facebook apps, wikis, or mass collaboration, you need to think about what is it that you are doing that people will talk about there.
And, it’s not just online. It’s offline as well.
It’s everything.
Your Receptionist Matters..., your business cards, your on-hold music, the lighting in your office, your website, it’s the details…everything.
Now, you don’t need to do it all at once. You can’t. Inch by Inch... it’s a cinch.
But, if you aren’t going to try and be “remarkable,” is it really worth doing?
This is the easy part, but it’s also the hard part.
Comments
Adam said on 7.08.2008 at 2:00 PM
The more I read about WOM (incl. Andy and Seth's blogs) the more I think that this is about gimmicks not substance. Particularly Andy's blog. It's all about weird stuff you can do to get people talking. Rarely do I read anything about the fundamentals of what the business offers. So if it's a restaurant, the ideas are all about gimmicky menus and interactions with the owner. Not how damn delicious the food is.
As a marketer, this all gets bucketed with quirky PR that is fun but not something I'm going to spend a lot of money on.
The industry needs to get a bit more serious if they want to be taken seriously.