Microsegmentation and Social Media

Since the topic for this week is Microsegmentation and Social Media, I am very interested in discovering current and future marketing strategies that utilize social media. I find that social media is used more to keep up with ones favorite celebrity, or to obtain the most friends on ones facebook page. The obvious use to a company would be to connect with current customers and potential future companies. For example, when apple releases a new product, the Ipad , they can tweet and broadcast that information to all their followers, many of whom who will probably go out and purchase that product. However, I want to see how social media marketing can be taken beyond this face value approach and evolve to something greater.

This week, I intend to cover the following materials -
Chapter 1: "The Origins of Social Media," in The New Influencers, pp. 1-14
Podcast: "Gil and Frank Discuss the Long Tail"
LISTEN from Fresh Air: Can The iPad Or The Kindle Save Book Publishers?
Chapter 3: "Making the Transition to the Social Web," in Marketing to the Social Web, pp. 31-47. (Download content.)
Video: A conversation with Evan Williams, Co-founder of Twitter.com (from the Charlie Rose program; length: 22 minutes)
Chapter 1 "The Long Tail," in The Long Tail, pp. 15-26. (Download content.)
The Seven Segment System for Online Marketing

Week 2 Retrospective

This week, I reviewed the following selections -
Introduction: The Dawn of the Human Network" in Crowdsourcing,
"Brand Communities"
Why the Groundswell and Why Now?" in Groundswell,
Web Video: The New, New Thing," in Digital Engagement
The social marketing playbook

I was able to stay on task, and complete my goal of reading/listening/viewing almost all of the media. The fundamental theme of this week’s selections is how powerful a tool the internet (and it’s mass of followers) can be when enough users group together and are focused on a single issue. To quote my favorite movie “The Gladiator”, Russell Crow’s character says the following after one of his gladiator battles “ I am at their mercy (rulers), with the power only to amuse the mob”. The answer he receives, “That is power”. Similarly, the internet has created a global network that allows the real power to be placed back in the hands of the common people. For companies and marketing, this has both positive and negatives effects. The best example is P&Gs “Connect and Develop” program, which helped reignite the company’s innovation base and turned around the company’s revenues. While I never participated in this program, I have helped and profited in similar online innovation networks helping to resolve electrical engineering issues for other businesses. As a live collective of knowledge and resources, questions can be answered much quicker and more cost effectively by tapping into this vast potential of public brainpower. This idea can be utilized for tough issues such as green energy solutions or simple problems like asking for help with home improvement questions.

Another similar example is threadless.com, as presented in The Dawn of the Human Network" in Crowdsourcing. I actually intend to borrow this idea, and use it to market products for my wife’s business. My wife owns a wedding invitation studio. Followers can submit their designs, and the community (future brides) vote on the best design, which will be used in her collection. By doing so, you have already ensured the popularity of the design. The social mob can also generate unwanted media for companies. Examples of this are the vast internet public that viewed the Comcast technician who fell asleep on the job or Jennifer Laylock’s promotion of the other white milk as presented in Why the Groundswell and Why Now?. I did find the discussion about open source technology and the motivation behind users improving the technologies very interested. Unlike Windows, Linux is an open source operating software technology. Software coders worldwide help improve this software, but do not do it for any monetary purpose, instead they want to be part of helping something bigger than themselves. Who knows, even though not profit driven, maybe the motives are selfish, and they want to show off how much smarter they are than everyone else?

Also, I would like to learn more about Harley Davidson and their social networking strategy. I’m not sure if it played a major role in their resurgence. Sometimes I feel that too much emphasis and reward is placed on social networking for the success of a business. Yes, it can be very powerful, but it depends on what field the business operates, and how social networking is used.

I also appreciated the statistics presented in the article below –
http://www.marketingvox.com/study-marketing-execs-must-realize-and-learn-to-use-power-of-social-media-036996/

Week 2- Discovery

The first week of class was utilized to get a sense and feel of the class and the tools we will be using. In Week 2, I can begin to challenge myself and start to understand the past and present situation of marketing and digital technology. This is necessary in order to perceive the possible future of digital market, which I will strive to answer in the next several weeks. Since there are less required and optional materials in week 2 compared to week 1, I intend to view all of the materials.

Week 1 - Reflection and Review

The biggest take away from this week’s suggested media is just how young the internet still is. To quote what Reid Hoffman stated in his interview, “the internet is still at the end of the first inning”, in reference to a baseball game. Currently, the internet is a virtual medium where anyone can upload any information, with minimal verification. A good example of this is Myspace. Myspace is a social network where people can meet/connect virtually, but a lot of them are strangers who are often dishonest about who they were. This has resulted in limited credibility for Myspace and similar social networking sites. Now, the internet and especially social networking sites are fast becoming a center that establishes a true connection between the real world and the virtual world. Sites like Facebook and Linkedin are set up to first guarantee the trust of and between their users.

The other major theme I noticed was how internet companies would be monetizing their ideas. Reid Hoffman’s belief is that if you have the next great idea and people want it, then it needs to be scaled up and profits will be realized in the future. Marc Zuckerberg also fosters this idea, which is why he is not relinquishing his role as CEO of facebook. However, most of these newer ideas (Ning, Facebook, Quick), are not very profitable in their current sate. Their main source of revenue is ads. However, these businesses are working on other avenues to be profitable. One marketing idea that was clever was discussed by Marc Andereesen. The idea is to market a product before the product has even been created in order to determine the demand for the idea. This would be done by placing pop up ads, and calculating how many people click on these ads (nothing would be behind the ads). Similarly, I already do this when I am interested in purchasing a piece of real estate to be used as a rental property. I will place an ad on craigslist about my potential rental property and if I receive enough inquiries, I will know that I will be able to rent the property at the advertised price. This emphasizes that there are still a multitude of unrealized potential for digital marketing on the internet.

That being said, there is still a lot of misperceived conceptions about the internet and marketing. My comment that I would like to add is best summed up by a 15 year old summer intern, Matthew Robson, who worked for Morgan Stanley in the summer of 2009. At the behest of the bank's research team in London, Robson described how he and his friends interact with all kinds of media, from television and movies to Twitter and Internet radio, which got the attention of the CEO. He said that teens devour all kinds of media but are reluctant to pay for it. They listen to music, but prefer online sites, such as last.fm over the radio. They watch TV, but only when their favorite programs are in season. This was further emphasized by Gil and Frank in part 3 about the newspaper industry as they stated younger people are very adept at dodging paying for media on the internet. I completely agree with his final point, which he stated that view ads on Web sites as "extremely annoying and pointless." I personally have never clicked on them, and this is the main source of generated revenue for almost all internet sites. While the Internet and social networking sites are popular among teenagers, he gave micro-blogging service Twitter the thumbs down. This just points to how infant this internet still is. Marketing is continuously evolving in the digital age of technology as businesses begin to understand what works and what does not work. Many practices that work in the physical world will not work in the virtual world.

This article on Mathew Robson can be found here -
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/International/story?id=8070196&page=1

Self-monitoring report , Week 1

Below are the materials I was able to cover during the week. While my ultimate goal was to view all of the selections, that was difficult due to the amount of information provided (some selections were over 100 pages). One comment about this is that it was much easier for me to take in the materials that didn’t require reading, as I was able to listen to the podcasts while working out at the gym or watch/listen to the videos while checking up on my work email. In today’s fast paced lifestyle, multitasking is necessary, and marketers need to recognize that information needs to be conveyed in the easiest and most efficient ways to the consumers. One not of technical difficulty. If I click on the link to some of the selections, I will receive a "navigation to the webpage was canceled" message. In order to access the actual page, I need to right click on the link and select, "open in a new window". This is for Internet Explorer 8.

Chapter 1: "Made to Engage", in The Age of Engage, pp. 1-26
Podcast: "Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 1"
Podcast: "Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 2
Podcast: "Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 3"
Video: A conversation with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn
Report: The Future of the Internet; from the Pew Internet & American Life Project
Book excerpt: "Mastering the Hype Cycle"
Article: "Do You Trust This Face?" by Alex French, GQ, December, 2008.
Video: "A conversation with Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos," from the Charlie Rose program
Video: "The Web and TV, a sibling rivalry," presentation by Peter Hirshberg, Silicon Valley executive
Video: "A conversation with entrepreneur and software engineer Marc Andreessen," from the Charlie Rose program
What is new media? (from The New Media Reader)
Technology and ideology: the case of the telegraph (from The New Media Reader)

First Post! - learning goals, outcomes, and questions

This week, I intend to get a better understanding of exactly what this class is about and the types of material and content that we will be learning from. The course is named “Marketing in the Era of Digital Technology”, but will this course be emphasizing more, technology or marketing. I assume it will be a perfect blend of both. After looking at the topics and assignments for this week, there are 14 selections of media to experience. If I am not able to read/listen/watch all of these, I would like to sample several from each different media type (articles/podcasts/videos) so I can get a good feel about the benefits each one provides.