Been reading The New Influencers by Paul Gillin. I thought that some excerpts from the preface were worth sharing (partly for the benefit of busy associates who won’t have time to get to this book any time soon). Worth reading for yourself, but I least wanted to share how Gillin characterizes current reality, as food for thought.
Gillin introduces himself as the guy who, in 2003, publicly dismissed blogging as a phenomenon that had about run its course. He reels off a bunch of numbers to show just how wrong he was. He then credits Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, with crystallising the true impact of emerging media on the marketplace - and summarizes his take on the marketing implications in a section called The Marketer’s Dilemma.
The shift to small markets served and influence by an entirely new breed of opinion-leaders is a sea change for marketers. Most marketers still have no idea what to do about it.
After summarizing the "old" way of doing things, and how success was measured, he moves on to the impact that the Internet has had on the old system:
Consumers and businesses have gravitated to social media with awesome speed. While we’re still sorting this out, the extent to which communities and influencers have already emerged in this new media world is stunning.
The conventional media industry had evolved to a point where there were established rules, standards and governing bodies that were universally accepted. Now, he asserts, all bets are off:
What’s captivated me about social media is the the extent to which new centers of influence have emerged that have no rules, no governing structure, no standards and no hierarchy.
Not quite, anyway…
Complex patterns of governance are emerging, driven by a set of shared values that aren’t codified but just understood
He goes on to discuss the impact that the Internet has had on conventional marketing channels like newspapers, television and radio. But he doesn’t stop there. He also suggests that some aspects of the commercial Internet have begun to look just as outdated:
Even conventional Internet channels are becoming exhausted. Spam and list exhaustion are undermining email marketing. Web users ignore banner ads, except for the intrusive ones, which they despise. Publishers and ad reps engage in a pointless debate over a few hundredths of a percent in the response rate.
So where is all of this headed?
Social media offers a chance to break this gridlock and engage with their customers in a whole new way. The new discipline is coming to be known as ‘conversation marketing.’ It means creating a dialog with customers in which useful information is exchanged so that both parties benefit from the relationship.
How do we get there?
Conversation marketing requires a completely different set of skills than those that have dominated the marketing profession for the last two generations. It means throwing out the spreadsheets and the mailing lists. it means ditching terms like ‘reach,’ frequency,’ ‘impressions’ and ‘click-through rates’. it means understanding who your customers are, who influencers them and how to engage with those influencers. It means exchanging information, not delivering a message.
(Gillin also has an interesting summary on the demographics of this "new" audience, which will be the topic of a followup post).
