Gartner’s definition of thought leadership marketing is this:
“The giving—for free or at a nominal charge—of information or advice that a client will value so as to create awareness of the outcome that a company’s product or service can deliver, in order to position and differentiate that offering and stimulate demand for it.”
Taken from here.
I’m sick of people asking me to make things go viral. Here’s what’s next, friends and critics: a return to the desk. That’s right. A real job. Social media as a tool and not as a fancy shiny object.
What are people doing taking titles like “Social Media Manager?” To me, this is a scary thing. Why? Because it’s like being the fax manager or the email manager. You’re naming yourself after a tool.
The jobs where you might use social media tools exist in the marketing department, in the PR department, in customer service, and in several other parts of the company. Maybe this sounds wired. Maybe it is. I guess my big point is that we’ve got to shift this from “gee whiz” to “this is what we do to build business relationships.”
Push away from meaningless metrics and point your efforts towards moving the bottom line. It’s absolutely imperative that this become a “real” job instead of something cool.
For people that use the internet frequently it is easy to identify valuable websites from the rest. When you see a website for the first time you make an instant judgement on its quality and relevance. This first impression is then carried over to other parts of the website, like content and professionalism.
When you break it down, web design is simply the manipulation of content and images on a website to appeal to the perceptions of a target audience. The psychology community has conducted studies since the early days of the internet. Take a look at the Barack Obama website – for me, the attraction was instant! And I can’t see that website looking as good if it were in any other colour.
All humans have a psychological need to feel secure, and on the internet that need is multiplied considerably. Taking this into account, websites must incite a feeling of security within a visitor before they will take any action on your website. There are many ways to accomplish this – disclaimers, privacy policies, brand-name security logos, etc – but the best way is to simply be upfront about all aspects of your website, product or business.
Pay attention in the first few seconds of visiting a new website and take note of why you like it and what they have done that is effective. After a while you will begin to pick up smaller details which is really what online marketing and web design is all about.
The author of the book, Mark Hughes, is the host of Buzz Factor, a radio talk show, and the CEO of Buzzmarketing, a consulting firm. He has also been an executive in Half.com and Pepsi.
The book is divided into sixteen chapters with an introduction and an afterword. Inside it are anecdotes and accounts of how some big brands and not-yet big brands have used buzz marketing, making readers feel like gossip-mongers peeping into the practices of big companies. This approach and the writer’s easy-going style turn this business book into a fun-to-read but very informative and serious work.
When I started reading the first few pages I knew, as a reader, this was a book I shouldn’t miss, since the premise of the book and its entertainment value defied convention. The book was letting its readers peak into those other avenues of marketing that worked better and possibly faster. The aim of this book is to teach its readers buzz marketing so they can “grow faster, expand further, and do it for one-tenth of what it costs by more traditional means.”
Buzz marketing needs people to use their gray matter and steer away from conventional, pushy business tactics. Traditional advertising spends more, gains less. Buzz marketing spends much less, yet gains more cash and people’s trust, because buzz marketing is creative in seeking and employing opportunities.
It’s hard to make a viral campaign that works. But metromind had it figure it out quite nicely this weekend. They took an event from last week that had the potential to become viral. A movie clip feautering a famous singer swearing. They acted quickly and transformed it in clip promoting some art galleys and projects.
The initial clip has about 20.000 250.000 views on youtube and theirs has 10.000 in just 2 days. So great timing, with the right characters and the right product do make a great viral.
Later edit: As Adrian is saying in the comments the initial video had a little bit more comments. 
Still great work and i am sure you will get there in the next couple of days.
A big discussion at Geek Meet was online advertising in 2009. Obviously, advertisers buy ads to gain exposure and improve their bottom line. Some of the big players may be primarily concerned with brand awareness and general exposure, while others are only concerned with sales of products.
Keeping the desires of advertisers in mind throughout the design process is critical if the website is going to be selling ads directly to other businesses. AdSense and affiliate ads can be placed just about anywhere on a website, although the results will vary, but direct ad revenue will depend on what advertisers feel they are getting for their money.
I personally think that in 2009 ads will pay more attention to user interaction; at what extent is the user engaged in the marketing process. So we are going to see a lot of banners that will lose the “click here” approach and tend to promote advertising as entertainment on the web.
Customize your product, interact with widgets or any other kind of interaction for the user will benefit advertisers. Also a big step will be the “cost per action” method applied on the Romanian market. This is going to work taking into consideration the big number of blogs and the influence they had in 2008.
I persoanally think that 2009 will be an interesting year and with a little mantality shift advertisers can contribute themselves to the gowth of the local internet scene.
