Stop Blogging, Start Blogging
January 15th, 2009A man recently came to see me in my office. This man was a marketing guru. He had a hat, and in this hat was concealed 1.4 kilograms of pure web marketing expertise.
“Stop blogging,” he said, “and start blogging.” I nodded gravely. His sage advice passed into me like a seagull flying into a jet engine. The implication of these words was clear: If you’re going to leverage your presence in the Web 3.0 datasphere, you’ve got to make the most of your social brand differentiators. This means leaving the old thinking at the door — no longer is it merely about creating value, you now need to link that value to a framework of brand relationship using the latest and greatest digital tools. The challenge thus becomes implementing fully realized multi-dimensional ultra-interactive mega-relationship between a brand and its customer base using numerically conceptual end-to-end space media. With a bit of effort you soon discover predictable business results in your pants. “Stop blogging and start blogging” is code for the key paradigm of web marketing in 2009: stop doing whatever you’re doing, and start doing something else.
But how to facilitate such a profound shift in thinking? After all, your CMO is just learning what Friendster is. Here are some tips for generating results:
Clear Communication. Clearly communicating with your team is essential for ensuring the sustainability of your initiative. Say, for instance, that you would like a tuna sandwich for lunch, but instead you ask for a chicken salad sandwich. In all likelihood, you will get the chicken salad sandwich, which is not what you wanted, now is it? Now consider the outcome if you had asked for the tuna sandwich instead; I think we can agree that you would be much more likely to get the tuna sandwich, and then you would have a better lunchtime experience, and more capable of making key decisions throughout the rest of the day, such as: what will you have for lunch tomorrow? This simple example really exemplifies how crucial it is to use clear, comprehensive language.
Identify Your Stakeholders Early On. It really is essential to have a very clear picture of your stakeholders from an early stage of the project. This picture may be a photograph, or it may be an artist’s rendering — perhaps a sketch or a painting, an cutting-edge 3D model if you work for one of the larger firms. Regardless, you will be able to clearly recognize the stakeholders by the sharpened sticks they will be holdings: these are their stakes. The stakes may be wood, metal, or more recently, a mylar/kevlar combination. Either way, they generally stand out. Make careful note of the size and shape of these stakes, as well as the expressions on the holders’ faces — do they look like they’re happy? Like it’s lunchtime? Like they need to pee? These observations will form the linchpin of your Stage 2 delivery platform strategy.
Activate Your Powerups. Let’s face it, you’ve been keeping those things in your inventory for ages. What are you waiting for? Is Michael Arrington going to descend from a UFO and demand you justify your professional existence in 10 words while battling you to the death in a swordfight? You’ve probably got like 20 Ultrapacks just lying around, that’s like +10 Persuasion for 79 rounds. If you just use them, you’ll find your task significantly easier.
Above all, the trick to success on the web is learning to avoid targeting problem areas in ad-hoc manner. You need to start with a sturdy foundation, like a block of cement. If you put your website on top of a 50kg block of cement, nobody is going to mess with you.
