Bookmarkable - or how to spread an idea

Posted on October 20, 2007
Filed Under Social Marketing |

How to spread an idea? - Don’t talk to people good in ignoring messages.
Now that sounds like a very obvious thing to do. However its not in todays advertising industry.


Slide of Seth Godin - Ted talk

When an agency talks about wastages - they mean they talk to people who ignored your message.

Whilst its pretty clear that mass marketing does not work as good and simple as it did years ago, loads of money is still spent on “talking” to people who just ignore the messages sent to them.

And its pretty simple to guess why. Try to imagine you would try to buy toothpaste at the drugstore based on figuring out which of the ones in offer are the best deal for you. Say there are 20 different toothpastes - this exercise will take you 20 minutes easy. Reading the ingredients, comparing amount of calcium, checking out the prices etc etc.

You would go crazy over time if you would try to figure everything out on your own.

Now there are two ways to avoid this dilemma 

  1. you go for a brand - yay thats easy brands are like lighthouses in the process of buying decisions but not easily built
  2. you go with the advice of a person who knows - how we love that being told whats good for us by someone we trust in that matter

I’m sure we can agree building a brand is a long shot with usually loads of money and effort involved. So lets look at option 2. How about just talking to people who care and will not ignore us and our message, because they care about our offer, product, service etc.

And this is what social media marketing does, it is trying to find the Innovators and passionate Early Adopters and “talk” to them in the hope they spread the word. And a message spread by word of mouth is so much more credible and strong that reaching just a few of the “right” people will get your message to the masses - As and thats a very very important twist - with todays online social networks - the messages can spread in no time to millions of people.  

TED talk by Seth Godin - who does not talk about social media marketing but does a brilliant job to describe what it takes to be remarkable. And remarkable could be easily translated into bookmarkable in social media marketing.

  • How to pitch Social Media Marketing to your Boss Part II - Rand Fiskin
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  • Dance for Rank - Alexa Tees
  • Google real estate - new feature good idea and nice integration

    • Comments

    One Response to “Bookmarkable - or how to spread an idea”

    1. How to pitch Social Media Marketing to your Boss Part II - Rand Fiskin on October 20th, 2007 8:01 pm

      [...] Now he didn’t do it in two short sentences but was kind enough to give me his thought on how to sell the concept. For him the most important upside of social media marketing wasn’t necessary the backlinks generated or even the huge amount of visibility you could generate this way. Although these are obviously very nice “side-effects”. The most important thing to keep in mind for him was that you could never ever reach the people you can reach through social media marketing through the traditional channels of mass marketing like TV, print or radio. Just as Seth Godin stresses in his books like purple cow you need to be remarkable - bookmarkable. [...]

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