Today’s my birthday. That’s why I’m doing what I like most - defining the shape of a marketing practice :)
I did the same for article marketing about two years ago at MSI. My ideas - which formed initially in my work at WebProNews - gradually grew into a service that was rolled out (in atrophied but well intentioned form) to around 20 clients and towards the end of my time there I started working to improve the quality of the offering through strategic, highly targeted articles and distribution.
I also laid out my concepts on market conversation strategy, which has the DNA of my practice as I currently conduct it: A Market Conversation Strategy Guide for B2B Startups. (It’s behind MarketingProf’s pay wall.)
Very recently I’ve been working with Ben Wills to more clearly define some of the granularities of Social Media Marketing. Social Media Marketing, as I’ve discussed it with Ben, differs to some extent from how I currently practice conversation marketing concepts for my clients.
Vertical Market Conversations + Ecommerce
Because integrating a vertical social network into an ecommerce framework certainly relates to social media marketing, but it’s not marketing - it’s not quite a business model too. It’s following in Amazon’s footsteps and enabling your site visitors to add the value of their personal experience to your website. But think niche Amazon + social network built around the individual products.
Market Conversations as Market Relations
Like SEO, there are things you do onsite and things you do off site. They should integrate as much as possible.
Onsite stuff includes stuff like creating a blog, writing articles, writing white papers, creating video and other media. It can also include creating a framework with which visitors interact with you and other visitors.
Onsite stuff must be optimized for distribution in search results, other blogs, forums, social media sites like Digg, etcetera.
Offsite stuff includes stuff like blogger relations - establishing connections between bloggers and the brand shapers within your organization. Offsite includes publishing your articles in appropriate places, as well as having done your research homework and knowing which communities are likely to link to the content on your site.
Market Conversations as… Conversations
You know those folks preaching about reputation monitoring? Well, you should be listening to them preach, and most importantly, you should be listening to what your markets are saying about you in particular and their needs as they relate to your products or services.
Conversations work like this: You listen. You ask questions and listen some more. Then you respond and start listening all over again.
At the recent MPlanet conference I covered for MarketingShift it seemed that fortune 100 marketers are struggling with their place in their companies as online marketing moves increasingly into the hands of their customers.
Much of the directional advice involved moving into more business decision directions through better analytics. That’s good stuff. One thing I didn’t hear mentioned was that marketers have to become better listeners - listening well is the first step of a good conversation whether with your best friends or with a market - no matter where that market lives.
Fortune 100 marketers know this already - that’s what keeps market research firms and anthropologists in business. Still, these firms don’t help in understanding HOW to respond, through what channels, or how to maximize message distribution.
It’s my birthday…
…and I don’t know how to smoothly end this post. So it’s going to end with a jarring thud and the promise that I’ll give YOU a gift for my birthday :) (in next post…)
