A few months ago, I happily took up responsibility of handling social media & blogging for a useful web-startup. Maybe because I was doing it ‘right’ for some other projects and for myself. So sun was rising from east, people were alive and life was normal.
And then shit hit the fan.* I still remember the fine morning I sat down with a mug of coffee to schedule some tweets and write a post for the startup. If it was my account or one of my projects, it’d have been a 10-20 min job. Easy.
But for this one, I sat for an hour, gazing at screen, reading, brainstorming and even gasping. But nothing happened, next day – nothing, 5 days –nothing and even 2 months – nothing! I could not get to reach out as that brand.
Everything is clearer now. Now I know what happened. I was trying to market something I didn’t even know. I realized that marketing isn’t a department sitting in office shouting to people and gathering ‘data’.
Marketing is a reflection of your inner intentions and sharing of vision. It’s communication between to your co-creators – your users, your customers and you.
And I, sitting miles away from the headquarters of the web-startup, not at all connected to what they were thinking, planning could not do anything. I could just talk and know that much and make plans. No shit loads users, no trendsetting. Nada.
Marketing is not throwing off tweets, printing banners, making facebook pages, getting traffic, writing blog or advertising or any of that shit. Its communication – like the one happens between two players in a football team.
They talk, they decide, they agree, they adapt.
And one thing more – in a football tea, most of that happens without words because medium hardly matters. Basics are same. Tweets, Blogs, Updates, Emails, posters all are medium.
Don’t bother about the medium much. Just focus on what you want to communicate. What do you want to tell your customer today? What do you want to ask your customer today? Is it easy for him to answer? Do you carry on the conversation or shut them off?
How do you approach marketing? Does your business have a marketing department? Are your other departments involved in marketing? Are you involved in marketing? Was I able to change your views on it?
*Credited to legendary Naomi Dunford
Got a reaction? Got something to say? You can praise / bash / discuss this post on twitter, mail me or just do a reaction on your blog. Here are some people who tweeted about it:
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Sadly enough, I do agree with you here – so we can’t create an awesome discussion.
That said. I think that we should treat blogging, tweeting, emails, posters like it is real marketing. Tweeting most in particular because tweeting can cause that your brand will be exposed and with tweeting your brand is simply getting spread word of mouth. Just the online way of word of mouth.
Some people share links all the time on Twitter.. I am not really doing that, I try to reach my potential market by making conversation with someone – and then when I find a piece of content which is really worth tweeting about, I gladly tweet about it.
And thus the links I link to will have more value. Simple quantity vs. quality..
LOL! Now that’s real sad!
That’s a nice idea man. Actually I use twitter to share random thoughts as they occur. I like Seth Godin’s idea there – what would you do if you could just tweet 20 times a day? Tweet like that! What do you think about that?
Do hope to hear your take on this on your blog? Or is this done?
I agree to a large extent that marketing on behalf of a company as an external resource (or within their marketing dept for that matter), is not something any random Marketing professional can pull off effectively. For a smart marketer, it’s just about finding that “connect” with the brand, product/service, culture n vision of the company. That’s the recipe! Once you’ve got that connect, coming up with useful strategies, kickass ideas, magical marketing work, etc. will not be difficult. :)
Connect eh? Like connect to the spirit of cause behind whatever you are doing or connect to the audience & customer? Can you please elaborate?
I did some research for this comment, King! “Marketing Tips” is searched 110,000 times every month. People, including myself, scour the internet for marketing tips, tricks, and secrets. The world’s most successful brands don’t do any of this crap that the “Marketing Gurus” suggest. Big brands focus on the product or service, and let their people do the marketing for them. Let’s be remarkable, my friend!
Wow man, interesting way you told this story – gives me creeps. I mean, don’t they see that each one of them is a marketer right there? Ha!
Yeah man, that’s the only way worth taking – let’s be remarkable!
Thanks for commenting Nick!
Well! Its a nice title to begin with and I’d like to congratulate you Sid on writing on such a bold topic which is dealt with very less in todays time…. maybe because we “want” to ignore it!
Moving on, I felt that you probably missed out on the part where you wanted to specify only about online marketing. Because there is a very thin line b/w online and offline marketing and we generally get carried away towards both ends from time to time!
Now tweeting about your website is not wrong! like say just adding links on twitter posts isn’t wrong… and neither is talking with people and getting them to your site! The point is, if you have a strong online presence people will click on the link you post anyways! So y bother adding that extra time to talking to random people and asking them to come over to the site. Well, all said and done! you need the traffic, probably that is y you’re tweeting or sharing links in the first place! ~ taking real time scenarios i.e!
Communicating your self to your customers or targeting works if the one communicating it works as well.
Negative publicity/marketing works for some too!!! and then it all boils down to ethics!!
Now, offline marketing is diff! If you don’t have a name in the market, its very hard to create one and for people to trust you. There is the need to communicate and make them understand what you’re actually doing and why is it good or better than the rest.
But the bottom line as we all would agree is that if your product or service is good, you really don’t need seo or twitter …. its just an added advantage ;) I hope I could get my points across :P
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