HFTB Marketing Blog

I attended the Taking Your Brand Online Webinar through BrightTalk this morning. David Meerman Scott, Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan were the panelists and all had, as usual, interesting stuff to say.

image by Glenn.Batuyong

Of course there was the ubiquitous evangelism on the benefits of social media… blah, blah, blah.

But the really interesting portion of the webinar for me dealt with the question of whether or not all businesses should blog.

The unanimous answer, interestingly enough, was “no.”

To me, this is great stuff. Social media has a place. But there is always a tendency (or perhaps a law of physics) for the pendulum to swing too far in one direction. And with the rush to embrace social media for businesses, particularly small businesses, the question of whether or not a blog is needed is often not in the conversation. It is simply accepted.

Guy Kawasaki made the point that a home remodeler might not need to spend a portion of his day writing about his latest project when he is more concerned with making payroll in the next 30 days. I agree totally.

That’s not to say that the remodeler might not want to think about other ways to leverage social media (Twitter Search was Kawasaki’s recommendation). But at some point, business strategy needs to play a role in the conversation – hopefully, the starting point. Simply blogging because seemingly everyone else is doing it makes no sense.

So in sum, blogging is not a cure-all for what ails business marketing. It is most definitely a tool that can help – a great deal if done correctly. But tools should be used where they benefit strategic execution. And not simply because everyone else is using them.

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There’s been quite a bit of talk about the DiGiorno Flatbread Pizza product launch/social media campaign lately. DiGiorno, a Kraft brand, decided to deliver their new product to various Tweetups in major cities around the country.

The reaction from the online community has been interesting.

Some are hailing Kraft’s foray into social media as a harbinger of mainstream corporate acceptance of the value of some of the new marketing tools and tactics.

This reaction is a little odd to me.  After all, let’s think about what Kraft has really done.  They’ve found a way to dip a toe into the world of social media without actually taking part.

Trading pizza for influence doesn’t strike me as sound social media marketing strategy.  But perhaps this is only the first step in a larger Twitter presence.  Let’s hope… nowhere to go but up.

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Attended a great webinar put on by Hubspot this week.  Brent Leary, co-founder of CRM Essentials, presented on How to Use Social Media to Attract More Customers.

You can find the video and slides for download here. Check it out!

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Are you up to speed with the technological developments changing digital marketing today?

Image by deanj

Take a look at this incredible video that gives some interesting, if not daunting, perspective on the exponential nature of technological change in our world.

Click on the link below to take a look.

Launch the video

Thoughts on ways to leverage these trends in coming weeks on HFTB.

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photo by jswieringa

Seth Godin had an interesting post on how new media, particularly blogging, is allowing the relative increase in leverage for individuals (the small), while larger companies, or brands (the large), are losing relative leverage.  Leverage in this case, is attention to, or eyeballs on, a company’s marketing efforts.

His point is that more traditional marketing tactics in most cases have a significant barrier to entry – a budget.  In other words, you needed cash to play in the big leagues.

With new marketing, or blogging in this case, this barrier has been largely removed.  And as a result, individuals have been empowered to get their message out, whatever that may be, brand related or otherwise.

He makes the case that this has made it relatively more difficult for big brands to garner eyeballs in the online arena.

Maybe. But I would add that while there certainly has been an increase in leverage for individuals, it doesn’t necessarily have to be at the expense of larger companies.

A great example of this is Scott Monty and Ford.  Take a look at his Social Media Marketing blog and you’ll see what I mean.  Ford, in recognition of Godin’s point, has Scott heading up their Social Media efforts.  In other words, they’ve found a way for the power of the individual in the blogosphere to create value for their (large) company.  And guess what – I’d be willing to bet there is a fairly significant budget behind it.

Individuals can, and often do have greater clout than companies when it comes to blogging and social media.  This is one of the aspects of new marketing that sets it apart from many of the traditional tactics that Godin mentions are inherently budget driven and therefore skewed towards larger companies. But using the power of the individual, as long as the integrity of that bloggers posts is maintained through honest and frank relatively unfiltered content, can be a powerful tool that large companies can incorporate into their new media strategy.

As blogging becomes more of a business (and yes, don’t kid yourself, it is), corporations that understand the nature of what is valued online and have the budgets to allow a Scott Monty to head up their efforts, can turn the trend of small competing with large to their advantage.

This is not to say that blogging will ever resemble television advertising with expensive budget barriers.  But as thought leaders such as David Meerman Scott, Brian Clark and Seth Godin get their new marketing messages through, and large companies begin to incorporate those strategies more and more into their marketing efforts, small may not be the new large anymore.

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