Writer/Blogger Greg Verdino wrote a book called Micro Marketing. In his book he references social media and that everyone who participates in it- has an audience. Everyone with a twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc….has an audience of people who care enough to notice or even engage in the things they do. As you know, you don’t have to be a celebrity to have an audience (insert famous blogger name here). I met and saw Greg’s presentation 2 years ago. I don’t agree with everything he says in his books/blogs, but I do pay attention to the guy.
Here’s an excerpt from the book that might help to summarize where I am going with this:
“Every day the world sees 1 million new blog posts, tens of millions of tweets, hundreds of millions of new pieces of Facebook content, and more than 1 billion you tube videos. Where does your brand fit in? In our age of information saturation, consumer attention is the scarcest commodity of all-which makes your job tougher than ever. How do you thread your messages through billions of bite-sized information snapshots to reach the right people? One thing is for sure, you’re not going to succeed using traditional approaches. Mass marketing is dead; the next big thing is indeed very little”.
What Greg is suggesting is to think and act small. I’m not saying we need to necessarily do that with everything we do- just suggesting that we should apply energy to the smaller pockets of audience as well. We should continue to do the big pool type marketing, but make sure we are not forgetting the smaller efforts. Often we are enamored with the big chatter of getting on TV or having 250 billboards. Yes, this is awesome and we should continue to want that. Let’s not forget about the extra mile stuff. The little things.
The goal is to get the message out. To have more people see it. To drive our numbers up. It doesn’t always have to be the P1 hard core listeners-I can certainly be shared to your individual pockets of audience as well. Suggest to your friends and family members, etc. Everyone on social media has an audience. Their audience needs to see the content we create too. Sales should share this with their clients (especially the ones who DIDN’T buy into it). Every promotion part-time person should put this on their personal pages and share with their friends. I sent it off to my friends in radio (that don’t work here or even for the company) and they shared it too. My brother who has 97 Facebook friends will be getting an email from me today to share this with his “audience”. I’m assuming I can stop now….you get the point?
Let’s not become fixated on the BIG stuff all the time (although it is very important). A few small pockets of random people can equal a big audience. The goal is to get noticed and drive your total numbers up. Let’s make sure we are taking the extra steps in order to get the most from our investment.
Feel free to share this with anyone who would benefit from it.
PS- If you care to read about Greg or follow him on twitter… http://micromarketingbook.com or @gregverdino
Howdy Chase –
Thanks for the plug and for your personal take on the power of thinking and acting small. Love it when guys (and the ladies, as well) find a way to apply even one micromarketing principle to their own businesses. Cool.
Coincidentally, I read an article earlier this week that essentially took the idea of "small things" as inspiration for reinventing the media business. The author was mostly writing about how print media (newspapers in particular) need to move beyond the age-old "big two" business models of paid circulation and traditional advertising in order to turn around their revenue slump. His solution? Smart experimentation with lots of new, small revenue streams.
Check it: http://bit.ly/IcP1dZ (Not linking to me own blog – it's on GigaOM.) May be some interesting inspiration for radio guys too.
Anyway, thanks for the write-up. And for reading the book. Even if we're gonna have go have a conversation about the things I say that you don't agree with. 😉
Greg V