Jan 11 2009
Using Videos and the Internet in Marketing Part I
For a small town Clyde, Kansas has a lot to offer. We are kicking off 2009 with a series of economic development workshops. The first is called Using Videos and the Internet in Marketing offered by your’s truly. I am writing this post, not only to share with regular TechIntersect readers, but also to use as a reference for people attending the workshop.
Now I am not a marketer by trade, but have had a little background in the subject over the years. I am more of a technology geek with an interest in business and entrepreneurship, especially now that my wife has opened a business Wendy’s Party Treats. She depends on me to get the necessary binary bits flowing.
Being geographically remote has it’s challenges, but many mail order companies actually appreciate being in the center of the USA, with only a few days shipping required to any address in the country. If we can learn to take advantage of our FTTH high speed internet, I believe the opportunities for our residents can be unlimited.
Big changes going on right now
If you aren’t already aware, there have been some big changes going on all around us. It is as if we are living in the time of Gutenberg’s printing press and the idea is just catching on. Indeed, something every bit as revolutionary is happening and the people who can recognize it and harness it stand to benefit the most.
Just as in Gutenberg’s time, the general population was widely illiterate due to a lack of inexpensive reading material, I believe in our own time most people are technologically illiterate for a similar reason. We have only recently witnessed the very first generation that has grown up digital. Not too terribly long ago, all of the amazing digital media devices that we now take for granted were either prohibitively expensive, or had not yet been invented. For example we now have:
- iPods
- digital cameras (still & video)
- cell phones
- laptop computers
- Wii consoles
- broadband connections
My Journey – Web 1.0
As far as the widespread availability of Internet goes, I was an early adopter. Mosaic was the first graphical Internet browser, released in 1993. By 1994, I was regularly using Netscape Navigator which was the new name later given to the Mosaic Internet browser. I was even creating my own web pages on Geocities and on the now defunct Dustdevil.com servers. There was no local connection number in those early days, so all of my internet activity was paid with long-distance fees in addition to my internet access fees.
In those days, if you wanted to publish something on the web, you needed to learn something of internet technologies like web servers, HTML, and FTP. Not a big deal to a computer nerd like me, eager to learn, but to many it was a sufficient barricade to stop people from contributing to the web’s content. However, for those interested in learning more about the basics of developing web pages, I am offering an online course on Web 1.0 technology.
However, most people are not interested in even learning the web technology basics. It is no surprise. Most people don’t know much about how their cars operate either. They just want to drive, they don’t want to be mechanics.
Web 2.0 – The Read/Write Web
In the early days of the automobile, motorists needed some mechanical aptitude to drive because cars weren’t user friendly. As cars became more reliable and user friendly, non-mechanics could operate them as well. In recent years, the same thing has happened with the world wide web. Normal, non-geek people could finally contribute thanks to the Read/Write Web. Fellow K-State Professor Mike Wesch explains it in his wildly popular video: The Machine is Us/ing Us.
After Wesch’s video had over 1 million views in just a few days within it’s release, I knew I had to meet this guy, so Wendy & I invited him out for lunch in Aggieville (Manhattan, KS). It’s a good thing we met when we did, because in the months following, Michael Wesch has become something of an international celebrity, winning many awards and having many demands upon his time. But the story of a guy with an idea explained in a simple YouTube video gone viral made a great impression on me. That experience marks the beginning of my beginning to understand Web 2.0, and probably the starting point of thinking about this kind of workshop.
My lights are beginning to come on.
Last spring, I attended SXSW. I wrote about it here, so I won’t go into great detail now. Suffice it to say, SXSW convinced me that blogging, podcasting, and other Web 2.0 technologies are not just narcissistic fads, but in fact new ways of having global conversations. Not long afterwards, I started this TechIntersect blog. (Penelope Trunk has written about why she thinks blogging is essential for a good career.)
Some Books to Read
Since SXSW I started reading about things Web 2.0 and I have learned some fascinating things. Here are a few books to consider:
- The World is Flat by Friedman
- Groundswell by Li and Bernoff (I listened to this on an audio book)
- Grown Up Digital by Tapscott
- Tribes by Godin
We are entering into a world where people are no longer content to be passive consumers of media. They want to participate in a conversation, including conversing with the companies with whom they do business.
Ever feel frustrated by the fact that you were a nameless face when dealing with a large organization? Smart companies counter this frustration with professional corporate bloggers.
Marketing Online
I certainly do not have all of the answers about marketing your business with the Internet. However, I can tell you that traditional marketing strategies, e.g. the Billy May’s shouted message, is losing favor with people.
Sure, Billy is a millionaire and people buy his stuff, but that doesn’t make his methods right. E-mail spamming makes a lot of people angry too, but enough people respond to it, and the cost of the method is so low, it is worth doing. Read Seth Godin’s suggestions on writing personal e-mails.
The Billy Mays advertising method is still working, but I believe his days are numbered. One reason for this belief is because young people don’t watch television as much as their parents did. In eighty years of television history, only recently has television watching declined in popularity, thanks to the Internet.
In all of the reading I have done in the past year, I’m convinced that the best way to market on the internet is to engage your customers in a conversation to build relationships. Kathy Sierra was a speaker at SXSW ‘08, and one of the things she said was we should be less interested in telling others how great we and our companies are, and more interested in how to help others be great.
(Image credit:Kathy Sierra’s blog http://headrush.typepad.com/)
Check out what Kathy wrote about teachers and marketers to learn more. (This philosophy is the same as former GE CEO Jack Welch who wrote in “Winning” that real leaders reach a point where they are more concerned about helping their people succeed than in helping themselves succeed.)
