IN SEARCH FOR THE SOCIAL MEDIA METEORITE

Twitter Meteorite About to shatter Google's Earth

Last night I was about to go to sleep… heck! I was already in bed… with my iPhone..  Social Media Addict that I am…, checking for twitter activity, when a shower of meteorite related twits rained all over my timeline.

My first though was to remain skeptical. I vaguely remembered glimpsing, earlier in the day, over a few twits about an asteroid that was going to pass nearby our beautiful earth. It was a great opportunity for twitter rumor yonkies to newsjack the event, make up a few fake videos, post them online, leak a few links to news addicts and virally spread the fake.

However, tons of video footage mushroomed everywhere in my TL. Way too many to be part of the joke of a few webpranksters buffooning around. The meteorite was real.

My Social Media self took immediate charge of my insomnia.What an amazing opportunity to measure the power of Social Media!

I typed the word “meteorite” into twitter search. Hundreds of twits filled up with links to video and pictures emerged on the fly.

I typed the same word in google. Wikipedia, adwords selling meteorite samples… nothing about the Russian events at that time.

Social Sharing was overpowering google’s algorythm!

Twitter is an amazing tool to promote content, virally spread ideas, share thoughts on the fly, speak out, engage, chat… but, without any doubt, twitter is one of the most powerful search engines around.  In a sense, it is a competitor for Google, and, as well as for the search giant, searches should be its most important  line of revenue. They just need to figure out the least intrusive, most efficient way to monetize it… and they will. When they do find out... Could Twitter be Google's Dinosaur Meteorite Event?

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: LONG OR SHORT GAME?

Which One is Social Media?   BOTH 

A recent post by @jimdougherty titled "Why Social Media Marketing Isn't a Long Game" caught my attention briefly. It discussed a FORBES piece titled “The TruthAbout Social Media”, and ended asking: “Is Social Media Marketing a “long game” or are social goals more accessible than this?” Let me share my 5 cents on the matter.

In my opinion, the real question should read: Is Marketing (stripped off additional tags) a “long game”? If your answer to this question is yes, then you should treat SMM likewise.

Marketing has always been about a search to communicate ideas, a struggle for differentiation, a contest  to influence and resonate on people’s minds. Even when you use marketing to promote a short term objective, there is always a residual message embedded.

Social Media is a different channel to spread your message, a powerful one. One that tears apart the very fabrics of old fashion marketing practices for 2 main reasons:

1.-  It levels the plainfield empowering the consumer’s influence on his or her community.  The voice of an individual is not yet balanced with that of a company, but it is now at heights that enable it to speak up louder, and ears are listening.  Push and Pull strategies are losing ground to Participate and Embrace. The long run opportunities of this situation bewilder anyone’s imagination.

2.- It goes beyond the realms of other media because it is mainly about sharing. To Share to entertain, to gain recognition, to build a reputation or just for the heck of it. While with other media users engaged to mainly receive, anyone who engages in Social Media, joined either to share, receive what someone else is sharing... or both.   The power of Social media is the power of Sharing.

In conclusion, Social Media Marketing  requires a special understanding, different than traditional Media marketing, but, if you decide to include Social media as part of your Marketing efforts, then you should visualize it the same way you feel about Marketing as a whole. Whether it is a long run or a short one would depend on your perception about marketing itself.