My goodness, the world certainly has gotten noisy with Facebooking and Twittering and such lately. Everybody, including all my work compatriots, are hearing and reading about these new web-things, sometimes trying them out, sometimes resisting them. And always wondering if they are really important, worth the time. Wondering how they fit together.
I can pretty concisely express how all this stuff fits together, for marketer DAH. Forgive me if you already know this.
Facebook, Twitter, and their brethren - this is all Web 2.0 stuff. Web 2.0 is the second generation of web technology.
The first generation was mostly push and pull. Content was made available on line, sometimes pushed to us, sometimes pulled by us, to our own computers (websites, email).
The second generation, Web 2.0, shifted significantly, to interactivity and collaborative content creation.
The web is less static than it was a few years ago. And it is more democratic (not the political party) - it is easy and inexpensive for anyone with computing and internet access to join the fray.
All this Web 2.0 stuff is just new communication tools and systems. However, because they are inexpensive, readily accessible, and interactive, MORE OF EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING FASTER AND FASTER, communication-wise.
Our job now is to use and understand these new communication tools and systems, and decide if and how they will help us tell our stories (to the right audiences), to market and sell today and tomorrow. We must guard against the natural temptation to change our plans simply because something is "new."
My analogy: When a new hammer is invented, we should check it out and see if it will help us do our job better. We need not buy it just because it's new. But we shouldn't ignore it, either. Because it could be just what we need.
The job of marketing is, first, to identify the people we need to hear us (and buy from us). Then get those people to know, like and trust us (and buy from us). Our challenge with Web 2.0 (and any new tools or systems) is to decide if and how it can help us do that marketing job.
(Footnote: If you are not familiar with the concept of 'ambient intimacy,' do a web search for that phrase, and think about how that concept might change communication over time and distance.)
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