social media | The MarketFarm

More than ever, the medium is the message

At the time, he was talking about the fast advent of TV. But if you want to see the truth of his statement in action, you’re already in the right place: online.

A message in Twitter is 140 characters long.
A message on 12seconds.tv is, well, 12 seconds long.
You get about 400 characters to express your thoughts on Facebook.
LinkedIn is businesslike; you can’t get as lost as you can on Facebook, and the variety of activities in more limited.
Squidoo lets you type in original content, but it’s really about packaging other content — yours or somebody else’s — under a single thematic umbrella.
A blog is unlimited, but is accepted as “good” only if it gets updated frequently.

There are at least dozens more kinds of electronic media where you can place your messages. I know people who market themselves online using all of the above media and more. But if you want to get people to pay attention to what you’re writing, you can’t just cut and paste your blog post onto Facebook and Twitter and Squidoo, etc.

In some cases, there are limitations such Twitter’s infamous 140-character limit. In all, there is the simple and unarguable feedback from the market. If you do it right, people will pay attention. If you do it wrong, they won’t.

Doing it right means integrating strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities of the medium into whatever it is that you’re writing, videotaping, podcasting, etc. If you want to give a lecture, don’t bother putting it on YouTube unless you have strong visuals to go with it. And don’t simply post the transcript of your lecture as a blog if you want anyone to say anything nice about it.

Today, as newspapers face their toughest economic environment ever, they’re trying to figure out how to get people to pay for content online. When I ask people about this, the usual response is that they aren’t sure they’d find an electronic newspaper to be worth reading, let alone paying for.

But they’re imposing their view of newspapers as a print medium on the coming reality of newspapers online.

To be sure, some publishers will make a mess of it. They’ll try to do exactly what they’re doing now — but without the paper costs. And they’ll fail.

Others will figure it out. The paper of the future may provide headlines to your cellphone in the morning, with updates all day. On a Smartphone, the headlines may link to the full story. You may have the choice whether you want to get one section (world news, for instance) in-depth, and another (perhaps sports) on only a cursory basis. The website might offer configuration and search tools, letting you scan for all articles containing a specific keyword, or filter out stories from the opposite side of town. It could give you Tweets as news breaks, video clips of big events, or full context about ongoing, longterm stories. It may led you contribute news in the form of short video and photos. You might be able to read it on a Kindle, on screen or hear it through your ipod. And somewhere in there, they’ll figure out how to not only collect a critical mass of paid subscribers, they’ll also figure out how to serve advertisers.

In other words, newspapers will survive. But they won’t look like they do today, and they won’t DO what they do today either, because they’ll come to us not just through the same old medium, but through a Dagwood sandwich of media.

So McLuhan’s old saw really is more important than ever. When he wrote it, he was dealing with print, TV and radio. Today, because the medium is the message, it means the message changes many times a day depending on where you happen to be when you choose to accept it.

10 YOUNG entrepreneurs to watch

Warning: If you have more than 20 years already invested in your career, this is going to make you very tired and at least a little bit scared. Here, from ContentNext.com are 10 y oung entrepreneurs to watch. By young, they mean really young — no older than their 20s.

What’s most instructive and startling is the transformational nature of what these kid are doing. Their businesses are, largely, based on ideas that couldn’t even have existed 5 or 10 years ago.

If you have any questions about the power of the Internet to foster change; or if you have any doubt that the next generation does things very differently than you’re used to, then you ought to spend 10 minutes scanning this article. Then resist the temptation to take a nap.

Marketing, or just anti-social networking?

When I heard about the college kids who are making money by advertising products with temporary tattoos on their foreheads, I knew it wouldn’t be long before something like Wrapmail came along. As reported in Inc. magazine, Wrapmail is a service that puts an ad in every outbound e-mail sent from your place of business. Inc’s example was pretty benign: a guy who sells copiers is using the service to promote his own products on e-mails sent out by his employees. I can’t really see very much wrong with that.

But it’s not really welcome, either. And how long will it be before the matchmakers step in — paying individuals and small companies to advertise national brands in their outbound e-mails? My guess: within the next 10 minutes, if it hasnt already started.

We all know: The Internet tends toward cesspool. Every time there is an uplifting addition to the amazing things this medium can achieve, there is someone who finds a way to just as quickly coat it with a certain amount of stink. I’ve learned to live with that, even embrace and enjoy it.

Which is why I’m writing about Wrapmail (which, incidentally uses equally intrusive pop-up chat technology as soon as you open their website). I’m impressed someone thought of it. I’m also depressed someone thought of it.

And if they want to get the word out, they might consider tattooing it on someone’s forehead. Because on principle I’ll delete the e-mail I will undoubtedly receive from Wrapmail after writing this post.

What B2B advertisers really want from media

I’m not an advertiser, but I’ve spent the last 10 years selling to them.

I think my first day selling was the last day of the golden age in B2B media — back when magazine people spent all day bending over to pick up money, and then marveled at how hard they were working.

On my second day the balance tipped; customers by-and-large stopped looking for reasons to advertise, and started looking for reasons not to advertise. This has been documented and discussed. What’s missing from the discussion is why industrial advertisers might actually want the trade media to fail.

Start with the assumption that as much as buying marketing, these advertisers were buying security.They followed a simple formula, perfect for the engineering mindset that drives these companies. It was this: Advertising with trade media is the only reliable way to reach a targeted audience. So by doing whatever the competition does you will achieve similar results.

Feeling aggressive? Spend a little more and you’ll do a little better. There were few variables, like the strength of your creative, and the novelty of your logo-ed novelties. It was neat and simple and let companies get back to the business of making stuff — which was their true DNA.

Then came the Internet, which replaced measurement by lead-generation with measurement by click-throughs and unique visits. It put a premium on speed and courage; and it created so many variables that there was no longer assurance you could match your competitors’ results by matching their spend.

Suddenly, buying print meant spending a lot of money without getting any security.

That would be enough for marketers to resent the media. But there’s another piece.

The traditional media model is sponsorship: Media creates content, which advertisers sponsor to reach a targeted audience. As friend and former boss Teri Mollison now at F&W Media, likes to say, this is the “We talk, you listen” model of marketing.

The Internet? That’s more like, “No, you listen.”

This is an uncomfortable thing in industry, where blunt and scratchy feedback didn’t always have to be tolerated. Nonetheless, it emphasizes how little feedback print really offers. That’s troublesome because of print’s other historical value proposition: distributing product information.

What good is that function in the Internet era if the information takes a a month to get out; doesn’t provide a lot of feedback compared to emerging alternatives; and inevitably gets filtered by a team of trade press editors.

It’s not news that cuts in ad spending have been offset by increased expenditures by industrial marketers on videos, articles, e-books, blogs and other original content. The Internet empowers them to do something the trade press won’t: get information to the market quickly, with no strings attached, and without a filter. There’s no begging, no pitching, no sending of gifts (which never really works, by the way), no threats to the publisher. The media’s old customers like being able to do their own media work. They don’t want to give up the flexibility and the freedom. They don’t want to see the power move back to the edtors.

Media companies are suffering terribly in this recession, but I’m not sure if many of them really understand why. It’s not just because there are too may other choices. It’s because industrial marketers aren’t interested in their survival.