All posts tagged Marketing

  • May 28, 2008

    The Cost of Interaction

    I haven’t experienced a more concrete example of the low cost of interaction on the web than two responses I received from people that I recently wrote about. Ryan Holiday and Gary Vaynerchuk both replied soon after I published my posts. I shouldn’t be amazed by this, but I am.

    An orthodox branding approach, when considering your name as a brand, is to create a blog and only interact with those who visit. This is the blogging equivalent of spawn camping. This is also a poor marketing tactic if your goal is to create and interact with a readership.

    Unorthodox branding is to monitor mentions of your name across the web. It’s to pursue and engage those who have taken the time to share their thoughts about you. It’s recognising that this is word-of-mouth marketing in action.

    We all have the opportunity to appear benevolent, and invested in the success of our personal branding. It’s acknowledging that you’re being spoken about online, and maintaining a dialogue with these people. It doesn’t matter whether they’re speaking positively or negatively about you. That you’re willing to take the time to engage, to create a dialogue, signals your investment in personal impression management. Few achieve notoriety for being an asshole – and even he’s embracing openness now.

    I experienced some negative personal feedback earlier in the month. I wrote a review about an Alchemist show that I attended. Within a few days, it was picked up by the local metal community. The discussion made a few small waves before I became aware of it. You can read about it here. My response was concise, accurate and timely.

    You could argue that it’s only a bunch of metalheads – who cares? That response momentarily crossed my mind as I read through the initial discussion. However – I care. It’s my name. It’s my brand, far beyond my responsibilities as a music critic. I will outgrow that role: my name will endure.

    Nobody is more invested in the creation and maintenance of your brand than you are. If you’re not going to market yourself, it’s rare that others will do it for you. You’re your best marketer.

    3 Comments / Writing /

  • May 22, 2008

    Content Analysis: Winelibrary TV

    I was linked to WinelibraryTV through Jeff Jarvis’ blog. He wrote a short article on The Guardian‘s site describing the site and its owner, Gary Vaynerchuk. A few words from Jarvis:

    Before you read this, do me a favour and go to WinelibraryTV.com. Be prepared for a jet engine in your face. That blast of personality is Gary Vaynerchuk, a 32-year-old merchant who has made more than 450 daily wine-tasting shows online – just him, his glass and a spit bucket.

    The show, with its audience of 80,000 a day, has transformed Vaynerchuk into a cultural phenomenon. He has appeared on two of the biggest TV talk shows in the US and in the Wall Street Journal and Time. His book, Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines, comes out next week and the day he announced this on his internet show, his fans immediately pushed it to No 36 on Amazon’s bestseller list. He has a Hollywood agent. He makes motivational speeches. And he has only just begun. Gary Vaynerchuk is on his way to becoming the online Oprah.

    After reading this intriguing introduction, I immediately load the site. The episode at the top of the page is #467 – Some Wines At The Blue Ribbon. Not exactly the most descriptive of titles. I click play on the FlashBlock logo, and find that the video’s running length is sixteen minutes. This is an immediate turn-off, as I tend to avoid watching any streaming video longer than two minutes unless it’s attached to a convincing recommendation. I sure hope Gary thanked Jeff for his effective word-of-mouth marketing.

    Jarvis wasn’t kidding about the jet-engine personality: Vaynerchuk is entertaining from the first second. His enthusiasm and sense of humour is immediately apparent. I’m surprised and impressed that his energy and charisma hasn’t dulled after 467 episodes. I watch with a smile on my face as Vaynerchuk talks rings around himself, but constantly returns to several central themes within the episode. It’s almost as if the actual wine-tasting process is secondary to the cult of personality that surrounds the site’s subject; intentional or not, this is the impression that I get.

    Vaynerchuk’s concluding question of the day asks his viewers to respond with their favourite wine bar in the US. He specifically addresses casual viewers who are happy to watch without interacting:

    Lurkers! Please answer! You’ve been watching my show and you haven’t left a comment! Can you do that? It’s free! Give it to me! Please! Because you, with a little bit of me, we’re changing the wine world. Whether they like it – or not.

    A cute conclusion, and one that’s produced a reasonable return: at the time of writing, the video had 18,000 views and 250 text comments. Further exploration of the site reveals a spreadsheet maintained by a Vayniac that contains exhaustive data summaries on every wine Vaynerchuk has sampled – though it only contained the highest rating wine for this episode, wherein he tasted three.

    Vaynerchuk’s impact on my life was non-existent until I decided on a whim to give him a chance after an impersonal recommendation from a person I respect. I’ve now become a casual devotee of the man. His blog contains short videos that discuss business development, marketing, and personal ethics. What’s remarkable about the site’s content is that I only have a passing interest in wine, yet I’m now compelled to watch and interact with Vaynerchuk.

    This dude is the personification of the “good, open, free” edgeconomy model. His enthusiasm and winning attitude is contagious. I have a feeling that I’ll be following him for a long time.

    2 Comments / Writing /

  • May 17, 2008

    A Google Reader Shortcoming

    You click to subscribe to a site.

    If Google Reader is selected as your RSS reader by default, as it is on my PC, you’ll encounter the screen where you can choose to add the feed to your iGoogle homepage, or to the Reader itself.

    On that screen, there should be an opportunity for the user to rename the feed subscription. Instead, I have to click Manage Subscriptions within the left pane , scroll down to find the feed, and rename it manually.

    I just subscribed to a site named Social Marketing Journal. It’s written by a guy named Nick Stamoulis. I found his site linked from a TechCrunch discussion about social network data portability, which morphed into a semantic argument between Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington that I soon lost interest in.

    I don’t know Nick Stamoulis. I wasn’t aware that he existed until five minutes ago. But I’ve decided that his writing is worthy of my time and my subscription.

    My subscriptions in Google Reader are named by blog author where possible, instead of blog title. It’s frustrating when I have to search within a site’s content to discover the author’s name. “This blog sits at the intersection of anthropology and economics” is a descriptive title, sure, but it’s long-winded and, to me, irrelevant. What’s relevant to me is the name of its author, Grant McCracken.

    We live in an age where the production and dissemination of information is more decentralised than ever before. Knowledge distribution is no longer controlled from inside a walled garden, as it was when the words of newspaper journalists, authors and academics were singular voices of expertise. The walls have come down; the system has exploded. An individual has more information available at his fingertips than he could reasonably attempt to engage with in a lifetime, let alone analyse and interpret.

    This is the reason why I value a blog author’s name more than their blog title. When you’re falling down a bottomless pit of knowledge, noise creeps. If the audience reading your message hesitates for even a moment, your voice is lost amid the din.

    This is why Social Marketing Journal means less to me than Nick Stamoulis does. The medium is the message; without an author, a page has no content.

    Names will outlast titles. Your name is your brand. You should wear it with pride.

    1 Comment / Writing /
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