All posts tagged social media

Social media is not enough

By on January 20, 2010 in Ideas with 3 Comments

Don’t be fooled into thinking social media is the answer to your marketing problems.

Social media is a communication tool. That’s it.

Communication is nothing new. People have been communicating since the beginning of time. Only now instead of drawing pictures on rock walls, we type words into Twitter or Facebook.

Remarkable stuff is what matters.

If you don’t make or provide great stuff, no one will care about you. It doesn’t matter how much or how often you tweet, facebook, or spam, if you don’t have something remarkable to point people to, you are wasting your time.

I had coffee with a friend the other day who is a brilliant strategist and marketer. He’s doing a lot of social media consulting these days. He said that if a client wants to get into social media and they don’t have a truly remarkable product, the conversation about social media ends there. It’s futile. Social media doesn’t matter because no one is going to talk about your product or service if it’s not truly REmarkable (worthy of making a remark about).

So just make great stuff, or as Nick Campbell would say, “Make Cool Shit“

Will Seth Godin become irrelevant? (Updated)

By on November 22, 2009 in Ideas, Relevancy with 4 Comments

[ UPDATE: Seth just posted this on his blog today: Delivering blogs via Twitter]

Before you kidnap me and bust my kneecaps, let me say that I think Seth Godin is one of the preeminent marketing minds of our time. If you haven’t read him, click away right now and go read his blog. In fact, read it every day.

Here’s what Seth does: He has a blog, writes books, and speaks to very select audiences.

Here’s what Seth doesn’t do: Everything else.

Seth Godin doesn’t tweet, he doesn’t use Facebook, he doesn’t try to make viral YouTube videos. Basically, he doesn’t do anything that marketing experts say you must do in the current social media landscape to be relevant.

According to the social media barometer, Seth Godin is irrelevant.

Yet, he is still widely considered one of the leading marketing experts of our time. But how can a leading marketing expert openly refrain from the use of tools that are absolutely changing the way the world finds and shares information?

Seth is very open about why he doesn’t use social media. He wants to write the best marketing blog in the world and he considers everything else noise. But people are finding information differently now. They are finding new ideas in the noise.

My concern for Seth is that by refusing to embrace these new channels of communication, he’s missing opportunities to reach new people. Sure, those who know about Seth will probably always read his blog and buy his books. I guess what I’m saying is that it would be refreshing for Seth’s voice to be part of the social media conversation (his real voice, not the clunky blog feed from @sethsaid on Twitter).

Seth’s ideas continue to be timeless. His delivery may be losing ground.

What do you think?