Segmentation, marketing aimed at smaller local groups rather than great swathes of people….is it just me or does there seem to be a bit of a common theme in the airwaves at the moment?
Guy Kawasaki
I recommend this video clip of ‘the main man’: http://ow.ly/5G22Q– he talks about how we should be evolving our approach to social media from blasting out messages to ‘planting many seeds’. I have watched and re-watched and the message is so clear – ‘plant’ your brand in with real people and their lives and let their engagement with you drive viralawareness and engagement. His example is ‘lonely boy 15’ (and apparently he does really exist!!) but it could just as easily be the hairdresser up the road or your friend’s uncle . The message is to get real with real people.
AdAge DIGITAL
A recent blog post here struck a chord as it was echoing Kawasaki’s mantra regarding social media: http://ow.ly/5IPhb. Here, Dave Williams is encouraging big national brands to start targeting users at a local level on Facebook. He cites the small local businesses that already do this, to great effect and likens the approach to that of using local newspaper or poster advertising. Local businesses are also likely to rely on nearby customers spreading good news by word-of-mouth – Dave Williams advocates that this can be replicated on Facebook. He suggests that this can be backed up by local events and promotions, which in my experience are a great way to promote a Facebook business Page full stop.
Google+
I think now we can see why Google+ is looking so attractive to businesses and it’s potential is taking the social media world by storm. It offers the ability to market to and engage withtargeted groups – exactly what leading marketing experts are advocating we do.
If you add that capability to the power of the Google search engine and the likelihood that results will incorporate Google+ activity then I think businesses will be clamouring to get a profile up and active as soon as possible. (This is meant to go live later in the year.) Google+ currently has around 10 million users; Facebook has 750 million but if I were Facebook’s director of engineering Andrew Bosworth, I might be a little worried. He, however, is quoted (The Times, Mon 18 July 2011) as saying that he’s enjoying ‘watching the experiment’ of Google+.