Evangelist – The Marketer’s Role in SMM

Rob Key, Converseon: 

Online communities are evolving into different “cultures,” each with their own values,  enforcement mechanisms (to preserve those values), and language/lingo (RTFA).  Visitors to these communities violate the existing norms at their – sometime great – peril.  Violators can be ridiculed, exiled, flamed, or buried.  In other words, it can backfire or blow up in their face.

“Ask not what the community can do for your company, but what your company can do for the community.” (digg, FB, MS, de.icio.us, SU, Second Life (SL), and on and on)  For example you can buy a virtual tree in SL, and a company will plant the identical tree in the real world.

Note: when you enter an online community, be prepared to relinquish some control over your contribution, “controlling the message” is old media.

Adam Sherk, Define Search Strategies

Search engine marketers – the ones that spoke yesterday – boast about the number of times that the have been banned from these social sites because they are always pushing the limits of what is acceptable, or I should say “do-able.”  This is often called “gaming” the system.  Well, it is what it is.

Large corporations may get banned, but usually it’s out of ignorance of a social community’s values.  But they also have large (very, very large) dollars invested in their brands/reputation management.  And yet they want to edge into the online world – like a child walking down a swimming pool ramp into the cold water one inch at a time.

Small companies are nimble.  Very nimble.  Large corporations move slowly.  Very slowly.

? How will you sustain your online efforts over the long-term?  Short term is easier.

? What happens if your ‘brand ambassador’ or Power User up and leaves the company?

? What about employees who have their own personal profiles – which mention that they work for your company – and then they misbehave online?  What are the rules about that?

Can anyone comment about that – about policies that you have at your workplace?

Top 10 lists still work.  <me whistling…whistling…>

Listen, corporate online campaigns are like going bowling.  You pick out a heavy ball, aim it toward the pins, but then you let go of it and just stand there, watching to see if you get a strike or a gutter ball.

Sarah Hofstetter,  360i

* SEO – Google this speaker’s TV show “Living with Ed” (Actor & Environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr.) and you would get “Living with Erectile Dysfunction or ‘ED’.”  That’s why some people need SEO help.

* Audience building – contacting boggers, Actually Reading Their Blogs, and then aligning your pitch with their goals.  If you ask AltSearchEngines to write about your new FaceBook application, it is probably not going to get you anywhere.  See also: Common Sense.

Bonus:  See the Bad Pitch blog:  http://badpitch.blogspot.com

The perspective of this conference is that the companies build online relationships in order to benefit the company and advance their corporate objectives.  “Not that’s there’s anything wrong with that.”

But at AltSearchEngines, we build relationships in order to benefit the alternative search community.  Do we want more readers and more revenue?  Of course.  But stop scanning for a second.  Our success means that when we post about a search engine, that post will pack a bigger punch.  This is why everyone wants Read/WriteWeb to cover them.  (That’s not a secret folks.)

End of Session Seven.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 11:06 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.