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Google Buzz: Two Weeks In

February 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

What Is It?

Buzz is Google’s status update and messaging service that is built into Gmail. It focuses on staying in touch with the people you email with frequently. As a result, you won’t have to rebuild your social network. Instead, you rely on your existing address book.

In addition, it has no limit on message length, allows threaded discussions, and supports rich media. By commenting on the statuses of others, people also subscribe to those threads via email.

Of course, such a service isn’t something new. However, Google has been able to launch Buzz with great success overnight because of the large installed base it had with Gmail. The numbers are quite staggering as well. Google said there were nine million messages in the first 56 hours and 200 mobile check-ins per minute, and this was even before most people had access to Buzz!

With Buzz, Google has combined both data (contacts) and behavior (social sharing).

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The Online Marketing Framework

February 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The Online Marketing FrameworkOnline marketing can take place in many forms. Banner advertising, search engine marketing and content marketing are a few examples. Every marketing activity works differently and serves a different purpose.

The Online Marketing Framework is my attempt at providing an overview of what the main disciplines are, how they relate to each other, which types of activities they consist of, and what they focus on achieving. The framework is not meant to be all-inclusive and I hope to have addressed the key aspects of online marketing with it, but I definitely welcome your thoughts in the comments section.

The Online Marketing Framework is built up as follows:

  • Purpose First it looks at the purpose, i.e. what should the efforts focus on achieving?
  • Activities Then it describes categories of activities that look to serve each purpose.
  • Disciplines Finally, it positions the driving disciplines that incorporate the activities.

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Social Media’s Impact On Marketing – Part 2: Re-Focusing Marketing Activities

February 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I talked about social media causing marketing to shift from messages to experiences. Today, I’ll take a closer look at how two very typical marketing activities—PR and advertising—have fared with the advent of the social web and how such developments underline the need to re-focus marketing activities.

Public Relations

PR is exactly what it stands for: Public Relations. It refers to people, relationships and a long-term commitment to building reciprocal value. Despite developments in the PR industry and a number of worst cases, the underlying premise of PR has never been about creative spin, email blasts with press releases or begging for publicity whenever a new product/service is launched.

In fact, the negative spiral in which some parties find themselves in will be detrimental to them. The increased levels of transparency and interactions spurred on by social media will force these parties to change their methods of working as “broadcasting to” becomes “interacting with”, “message” becomes “experience”, and “audience” becomes “conversation partners”.

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Social Media’s Impact On Marketing – Part 1: The Shift To Experiences

February 16, 2010 By 1 Comment

The Fundamentals series continues this week with a look at how social media has impacted marketing. This will be a three-part series that looks at marketing in general, public relations and advertising. At the end, I’ll present what I see as the “Online Value Framework”.

For marketers, the fundamental power shift from organizations to individuals has also been noticeable. With individuals being able to talk back, one-directional mass marketing has lost its edge as a way to get a message across.

However, social media is not there to emphasize polarization. It is there to promote relationships. Just like any relationship, the business relationship between marketers and consumers is a game of give and take. Marketers will need to give (attention, value, quality et cetera) in order to take (money, positive brand perception et cetera).

When a marketer does not give enough, the consumer will lose interest and the marketer is unable to take from the consumer. The opposite holds true as well, a marketer who gives something relevant consistently builds a relationship where consumers have higher levels of brand perception and trust.

Marketers still need to remember that taking is also part of the relationship. Exchanges like a value proposition and a call to action for giving a product or service with real benefits and value keep the relationship real. Remember that relationship marketing is not solely about relationships, it is about marketing as well.

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The Impact Of Social Media On The Media Landscape

February 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the “new” media cycle. Today, the Fundamentals series continues with the “new” media landscape. The proliferation of social media has caused changes in the traditional media landscape. In this post, I’ll talk about what I think the impact has been and what the “new” media landscape looks like.

Over 20 years ago, the Berlin wall fell. This news was mostly followed on mainstream media, i.e. television, radio and print media. In 2001, when the 9/11 disaster took place, a lot of the news about the event was also followed through mainstream media but the effect of technology was already more visible as people were talking about it on emerging media such as bulletin boards, email and instant messaging. Moreover, part of the coverage was provided by consumers themselves through photos and videos shot on mobile phones. In 2009, the effect of technology and social media was more evident. One day after the death of Michael Jackson, search engines and social sites—such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs—were inundated with news, mentions and opinions as people were looking for information or looking to express their feelings.

Social media has made news travel faster, wider and in more diverse ways. The increased diversity with which people create and consume news has had its effect on mainstream media. Whereas print media and DVDs are in decline, social media is on the rise. Newspapers in particular have been hit hard. In the US, the total estimated revenue for 2009 had almost halved compared to 2005.

Nevertheless, the rise of social media should be considered a positive for media organizations. News interest has not changed, but the way news is consumed has. Fewer people dedicate a certain amount of time to sit down and read the newspaper, because the information is now part of the continuous information stream that also contains updates from work and friends. Social media has made news consumption an integral part of people’s daily lives.

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