

Does your company really want to hang out with me? - petercooper
http://sivers.org/sms

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shrikant
IIRC, there was this female (Magda..?) in William Gibson's _Pattern
Recognition_ who was employed by an advertising company to do just this for
their clients - social/viral marketing at its most grassroots. She'd hang out
at bars, clubs and other 'hip' spots, chat up people and subtly hawk the
company's wares.

The upshot was that she did this for so long, that she became quite unable to
have a normal conversation with people at such places - owing to the lingering
suspicion that there might be other such advertising 'plants' like her.

Good read, somewhat unnerving, slightly meh ending..

~~~
wallflower
WOM marketing. "Word of Mouth" I don't know how prevalent it is now but it
spawned a few years ago from a mashup of network marketing and friends.

<http://www.bzzagent.com/>

"Welcome to BzzAgent

Join BzzAgent's word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing network to try new products and
spread word of mouth.

How can your brand benefit from Bzz?"

~~~
dmoney
_it spawned a few years ago from a mashup of network marketing and friends._

I realize you probably mean "network marketing and things like it," but it
sounds like you mean a mashup of network marketing with the concept of
friendship.

~~~
shrikant
Which gives rise to the next evil: Multi-level Marketing.

MLM and its astro-turfers are the bane of my life. (Amway being the biggest
culprit here..)

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NathanKP
From the article: _"This is what's happening with most companies' “Social
Media Strategy”."_

Ouch.

But it is totally true. To my way of thinking a company shouldn't have a
Twitter account if it is going to be all business promotion. You have to mix
in something interesting to keep subscribers happy.

The same thing goes for business blogging, etc.

~~~
netsp
I disagree. I don't want to hear what some marketing executive is doing with
here daughter. Company twitter accounts are usually good inasmuch as they
stick to a particular purpose. It's fine if it is commercial or promotional as
long as it is clear.

I want to hear if a web service is having server issues, adding new features,
experiencing downtime, offering a special promotion. I want o hear if the
hardware store is selling something (I want) on sale. If I don't want to know,
I'll unsubscribe.

What I don't want is a mix.

~~~
jessep
The article and analogy definitely made me smile.

I agree with you to netsp, though, to a degree. I want them to be adding value
in the mental space where their product lives in my brain, but not as narrowly
as you say here. Relevant links, ideas, events are also good as far as I'm
concerned.

~~~
netsp
The article made me smile too. Bringing the conclusion back to the analogy it
sounds like he's recommending the girl from the bank just stop pretending and
really be your girlfriend, forget the home loan, meet your parents and I'm not
sure where it goes from there.

What I was talking about though is the idea of a 'mix.' That idea basically
makes twitter into a baby version of TV. We'll have content which people will
want. Then we'll have the promotion which people tolerate to get the content.
That doesn't apply very well online and it definitely doesn't apply to
twitter.

The problem with twitter when it's a company is not knowing what you are
signing up to. I have no problem with promotional content on twitter because I
don't have to see it, unless I'm signed up to it in which case I probably do
want it.

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falsestprophet
Companies are not _real_ people. They are literally fake.

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holygoat
"Social media strategy" says it all, really. You use a strategy to exploit
something.

~~~
pmichaud
Having a strategy doesn't mean being fake and uninterested. Anyone who
networks with individuals can tell you there's certainly a strategy involved,
but to be really good at it you have to also take a genuine interest.

~~~
roc
Maybe I'm a cynic, but I think anyone who calls it 'networking' is absolutely
building a 'resource' to be exploited.

When you're legitimately interested and genuine, it's just called 'meeting
people and making friends'.

~~~
pmichaud
No, that's just faffing around. The difference is that networking isn't about
making friends, it's about making mutually beneficial business relationships.
What I'm saying is that it's possible to be genuinely interested in someone's
business ideas and abilities, and genuinely want them to succeed, and
genuinely be willing to put in the effort to help them do that.

------
Alex3917
Part of the problem is that it's really hard to fully put yourself out there
in a way that scales. You could see huge and immediate benefits by running
muckwork as 'the derek sivers show,' but sooner or later you're going to run
into situations where there are people you don't actually want to be talking
to right now and you just wish you could put on the face of 'derek sivers the
businessman' to avoid the obligation.

I think that last word is really the key thing, because social media can be
insanely powerful in only a few weeks or months, but it comes with all these
longterm obligations that can quickly get to be completely overwhelming.

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kingsley_20
Quite true, but terrible analogy. You want to make a point about the bank,
great, but the bank's teller whom you have a crush on is a poor analogy for
the bank's social web engagement.

It _is_ hard to balance relationship building with marketing (just as it is
hard to draw the line between writing great code and shipping product). That's
why some of us get _paid_ to do it.

------
palehose
Companies also have the ability to identify potential customers by researching
what someone says on a social network. If a Zappos employee read someone's
tweet about having sore feet and was able to recommend a pair of shoes that
you would be interested in buying, would that be as big of turn off to you as
well?

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btilly
Drawing an analogy between marketing and dating reminds me of an old joke:
[http://www.themoneyac.com/time-for-a-joke-marketing-
explaine...](http://www.themoneyac.com/time-for-a-joke-marketing-explained)

