Before we get down to business, I wanted to note that I’ve updated the Glossary with some new terms I thought might be helpful. Click to read:
But on to other things. I read another great blog post from a few months back about “the changing face of search engine optimization.” It’s called, “The Face of SEO is Changing Are You?” and, bad grammar aside, it’s a good read.
Our paths to the outside world are many.
I just read a great post on Dealer Refresh about “Your Future Manager.” Here’s a quick excerpt:
Your future manager is a multi-tasking fiend. She or he will embrace every form of social media and communicate with staff by email or instant messenger. Technology use will be first and foremost on his or her mind, with an understanding that it doesn’t always work perfectly, but incorporating technology into processes is crucial. They will demand it!
It goes on to discuss how the younger generation (about age 30 and younger) has been bred into a multimedia cauldron – you may remember how “multimedia” was such a buzzword in the 90’s. Now it’s just a fact of life. Those of us from the “Connectedness Generation” are a breed apart from the past… the information age has infected us to a much greater degree.
Alex Snyder, the author of the article, describes his siblings and cousins and how all of them live lives wired (and now wireless) in so many different ways. It’s an experience that matches my own – as I type, I’m listening to the podcast of last night’s episode of Pardon the Interruption, keeping an eye on my Twitter and Facebook feeds on TweetDeck, and downloading last week’s episode of Lost, which I missed because it conflicts with two other shows I record on my DVR – Lie to Me and Mythbusters.
By my count, there are nine items in my house that are connected to the Internet, and that’s just for me – the dog is only seven months old and hasn’t figured out the Internet yet. And the truth is, to a large degree, Alex Snyder is exactly right. We should be looking for people with a talent and comfort level that makes them able to learn and adapt to new technologies and technological habits as they emerge.
No matter the industry, online reviews matter.
It’s one of the axioms of branding that the best kind of advertising is word-of-mouth advertising. One person telling another about their experience, positive or negative, is more powerful that fifty TV commercials. The problem has always been, “How do we generate word-of-mouth advertising?”
Before the Internet and “Web 2.0,” this was a very difficult thing to do, requiring grassroots events, surveys, testimonials and other expensive and difficult-to-execute programs. Now, in the age of connectedness, it’s not at all. Because of the proliferation of online review sites, and the way Google and other search engines have started aggregating; these reviews from all over the web, word of mouth is simply a part of your online presence, whether or not you sought it out.
I’ll write some about how to use Twitter effectively later, but here’s an interesting primer from The New York Times on the basics of Twitter. Check it out!
All You Need to Know to Twitter
To quote a bad movie adaptation of a good book, “A beginning is a very delicate time.“
No kidding. But here we are – poised to begin exploring this new world. We could start with a dissertation on why I love the Internet, but, really, no one wants or needs that. The Internet is all things to all people, and in the end, that’s all that needs to be said. What we need to concern ourselves with is connectedness.
What we have to learn, in order to make the Internet work for us, is how to harness that connectedness, because if we don’t, we’re either going to get burned, or we’re going to get left behind.
So what does “connectedness” mean, and why is such an awkward word so important?
“Connectedness” means that the traditional boundaries that we have used to delineate different types of behavior and experience are eroding. It means that, to paraphrase a song, “the Earth is moving under our feet.” It’s an exciting new world, filled with new ways to talk to people. New ways to learn about the world. And of course, new ways to sell to people. What companies need to learn is that in a world where people are connected to information and each other in an exponentially growing number of ways, you cannot rely on old methods to reach them.
This is a website about exploring the things that are necessary to win those battles for attention that are at the heart of Internet marketing and the whole “Web 2.0″ phenomenon.
