Today, I attended the “Marketing Your Way to Success” event presented by the city of Boston and the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The event was all about the way social media is changing the way you market your business. During the first presentation, the presenter, Adele Polis, shared the following video that really hit home this premise:
This video really shows the power of social media and does a great job of showing any “non-believers” why they need to wake up and embrace it.
The more and more I think about it, the question isn’t “Is Social Media the Future?” but “What will happen when the majority embrace Social Media (aka- inbound) Marketing?” Right now, I think the “early majority” is becoming aware of catch-phrases like “SEO” and starting to try out social media for marketing. Do the rules of crossing the chasm apply? How will we handle that much content when we’re already scanning headlines and skimming articles today? Will the web support this level of activity? What lengths will people go to to be heard? Email is already a much harder way to reach people (open rates are very low). Will people start heavily filtering (and rejecting) content in other mediums as well? I believe there will be a new “survival of the fittest” where only the clever and dedicated survive and are heard.
What do you see in the future in marketing? How do you see the rules changing as more and more people adopt this method?
Engagement is the crucial variable here. Is your content engaging, do you answer questions posed in comments and social media or do you broadcast (aka shout)?
If you shout, you’re going to be drowned out. If you engage you’re going to pierce through and while people are scanning they’ll switch to digesting and reading.
You can see it right now, people who engage on Twitter are succesful, people who shout are ignored (check out this post I wrote a while back about Michael Flaherty broadcasting and not engaging, and then he switched to engagement and got much better results).
Generic, standardized, broadcasting aren’t going to work in the “new” era. It’s all about customizing and connecting.
Thanks, Adam. Great point.
But is it possible we will even get overwhelmed by those “doing it right?” How much can we really even skim? I’m wondering if we’ll get to the point where even Twitter feeds and blogs will get too crowded. Can every person in America have a blog for their careers and be heard?
You said you skim through 200-300 feeds. Can you skim through 1,000 or how will you filter?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt on this and more of the future of the internet: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_web_in_five_years.php