Comments on: “White hat” social marketing

By: Geoff Livingston

Geoff Livingston — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:53:21 +0000

I think I prefer a light gray hat. Community should be the absolute focus of any social media effort. It’s the old battle versus the war thing.

But to me it’s not really pragmatic to expect companies not to build databases based on user interaction on their turf. If someone opts into communication with a company on their site, and are upset if the company records their reading patterns, etc. then they are in denial. I think it’s funny when marketers complain about this stuff, but we’re always the first ones to run to analytics programs…

By: CT Moore

CT Moore — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:20:03 +0000

I think that the propensity to leverage social networks only in the short term has to do with an underlying suspicion (that I think we all share) that any given social network has a limited shelf-life. First there was Friendster and LiveJournal, then came MySpace, and now we’re in the era of Facebook. Consequently, a lot of social media is regarded as short-term craze.

With Web 3.0 on the way, moreover, this suspicion might not be too far off the mark. In a few years, these “communities” are still going to exist, but only in the sense that target markets exists because of shared demographics and consumption preferences.

What is off the mark, however, is the corollary assumption that “digital communities” or “trust economies” are going to follow “the craze” into the sunset. Because of the way that Web 3.0 is expected to aggregate and filter information according to user preferences, long-term relationships are not only going to be more important than ever, they are going to be easier to establish.

Enjoying the trust of future communities, however, is going to be about being being part of it and investing in it (much like its members do), not just “interacting with it” or “reaching out to it” (like social marketers do currently).

By: Michael Seaton

Michael Seaton — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:19:45 +0000

Thanks for mentioning the post Joe.

If these communities are built right, the opportunities for marketing will be ripe. The old 80 / 20 rule applies here when marketers realize that 80% of time, effort and budget needs to aligned against building real conversations and offering real value. From there the other 20% can be effectively focused on marketing efforts – hopefully good ones!