To me, this is a clear representation of how social media differs from that of traditional media; direct marketing, advertising, public relations and its overall impact on branding.

As I mentioned many times before, consumers are tired of being marketed to. They are fed up with the millions and millions of marketing messages that are thrown in their faces and computer monitors everyday. And, even when these messages are coming from a third party (Cnet, Techrunch, NYTimes), there is still no guarantee as to the authenticity of the message.

And…as I continue to repeat myself again and again, consumers are talking.They are having conversations online and offline about brands. They are sharing their experiences with each other; and they are either praising your brand or tearing it a apart like a pit bull. And, it’s almost a guarantee that if it’s the latter, they are telling more than one person about it. This is the kind of viral marketing that you don’t really want to be viral.

We all know that social media is new and changing everyday; but one thing is for certain. There are conversations going on right now about your product, service, brand, your CEO or whoever. Are you listening? Are you going to join the conversation? Because if you do, it’s quite possible that great things may lie ahead!

Image Disclosure: The first image was recreated from here; which originated from here. I created the second one.

Technorati Tags: social media, conversational marketing

And, here is something really cool. It’s not his staff that is blogging, it’s actually Fred. And, it seems that his transparency (a characteristic of social media) on issues is helping him shoot up in national polls in the Republican presidential field. Good luck Fred!

Technorati Tags: social media optimization, smo, socialmediaoptimization, social media, fred thompson

I attended a session at the New Communications Forum a few weeks ago called “Viral Marketing – It’s the message, not the Media” facilitated by Susan Getgood and a few others.  Susan’s message intrigued me the most as she discussed the 5 C’s of Viral Marketing: community, compelling, comedy, charity, and contest. 

Of course, these 5 C’s make total sense to me not only as a marketer, but as a consumer as well. We all know that viral marketing in the social media space is all about communities. In fact, I would argue that communities play a larger role than most people think, both online and offline. They can build a brand, kill a brand, make a career, break a career, influence elections, etc.  Think about it; from an offline perspective, life is community driven through PTA organizations, church groups, sports leagues, stay-at-home mommy groups, and various school organizations (sororities, fraternities) to name a few. And of course online, you have Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Stumbledupon and hundreds of other social media sites jumping in the scene daily.  Within each of these online/offline communities consumers are talking and having conversations with each other. And, they are sharing opinions, experiences, advice, recommendations and commentary about products, services and companies usually based on real personal experience. This is viral marketing.

The challenge with viral marketing is that it’s not always viral, if that makes any sense.  Often, marketers plan for and label their marketing plans as “viral” but 9 times out of 10, it never catches on. It’s the things that just happen by accident that become viral. Remember the Diet Coke and Mentos video? At first, Coca-Cola distanced themselves from the exploding Diet Coke and Mentos viral video phenomenon, fearing it would damage their reputation and brand; however, just recently that have fully embraced the concept and now there are over 7,000 consumer generated videos on Youtube, millions of pageviews, hundreds of comments, and favored by thousands of fans.  The community here is not only the millions of Youtube enthusiasts, but also the micro-communities of people and their offline conversations about these videos.

Technorati Tags: newcommforum, social media, viral marketing, diet coke and mentos, susan getgood