This post first ran as a column in the Macon Telegraph on 12/16/2009.
A Mistake That Could Cost You Business
Businesses and other organizations on Facebook should have a business page set-up instead of a personal page. If you are found out or exposed to Facebook administration, you could be banned from Facebook in any form, like …forever. Besides, who wants to send out a negative vibe to potential customers because your messages are sent to individuals’ personal email boxes? People hate that. If your company (or nonprofit) sends messages as a legitimate business page user on Facebook, they are disseminated in the less-intrusive News Feed where they’re supposed to be.
Tech News to Ponder
More magazine and newspapers are creating their own apps for mobile phone use and getting cozier with e-readers (slated to begin running apps of their own soon). These new entertainments will create a surge in the drought-ridden print revenue stream.
Google is nearly ready to launch Goggle Wave, an amazingly versatile platform that will make collaboration from any part of the universe possible in real time. In the Microsoft labs, techies are testing a kind of Wikapedia for Everyman — not just the rich, famous or infamous. This makes pop artist Andy Warhol’s “Everyone in the future will enjoy 15 minutes of fame” idea a real possibility. Of course, they’ll be new privacy issues to deal with.
The Growing Inbound vs. Outbound Revolution
Marketing continues its rapid transition from “push” to “pull” with ad messages that bypass traditional delivery (print and broadcast considered by many to be intrusive and interruptive) to advertising that people look for on their own online — through reviews and comments on social networks, demonstrations on websites, viral videos and other entertaining online platforms. How many people would vote to have advertising messages on their cell phones? Even email marketing is now considered intrusive and interruptive to recipients (it’s called spam). “Getting found” by potential customers is what it’s all about in today’s inbound online world, and the first companies who come to terms with this revolutionary idea – painful as it may be — will be the most successful at day’s end. This takes the “agency” out of the term “ad agency,” as marketing firms will no longer serve as agents of media.
