Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • The social media goldrush

    A few months back I started a #socialmediaexperts meme with a slanderous tweet about those who arrive at the North Shore Coffee Mornings after 9.30.

    This was partly in jest, but there was a serious undertone as it seemed to me I was bumping into social media experts on every street corner and I just couldn’t see how all of these gurus were getting paying clients.

    So it wasn’t surprising to read that blogger B.L. Ochman found 15,740 social media experts on Twitter, a number which has more than trebled from 4,487 when she last looked six months ago.

    Almost certainly the numbers are higher than that, as those are only the experts who’ve listed themselves as such on Twitter. I’m sure there’s a heap more who haven’t yet discovered Tweeting.

    I also wonder how many of today’s social media experts were the SEO gurus of two years ago.

    To be fair, I’m sure most of these folk are hard working, well intentioned people but I can’t escape the idea that the current wave of experts is simply another gold rush and, like the gold rushes of the 19th Century, most of those flocking to dig this ground aren’t going to find much success.

    I wish them luck but of the 15,740 social media gurus on the planet, it’s probably ten thousand too many.

    Perhaps it might be better finding out who is selling these gold diggers their shovels and investing time and money there?

    Postscript: I did a search on LinkedIn for those with the position of “social media experts” and only 193 results came back, the scary thing is I’m indirectly connected with almost all of them.

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  • How marketing and business are interwined

    Entrepreneur magazine discusses changing your definition of marketing. Dan Kennedy has some good examples of businesses that have used tools such as membership and market positioning to grow, but I’m not sure they can be treated as marketing.

    All of the examples; Starbucks, Disney, Florida timeshares, barbers and gourmet pizza shops illustrate some great business models which is exactly what they are; ways of doing business that engage the customer and sell a better product.

    The marketing aspect is simply telling the story of why the business is better, unique or why it does something so well.

    One of the problems with marketing is it’s often about telling porkies, not about describing the product or why the business is unique. This type of marketing fails when the customer finds they’ve been sucked in.

    In the past, big brands have been able to get around this by using mass media to shout it louder and stronger on the idea that if you repeat the lie often enough, people will believe it.

    Marketing is part of your business DNA, you have to tell your story to get business. The key is to be telling a true story based on your product’s strengths.

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  • The Sleazy Carnival

    carnival clown stallSeth Godin set up a friends computer and found “the digital world, even the high end brands, has become a sleazy carnival” as he clicked his way through dozens of pop ups, offers and confirmation windows.

    The only real surprise is Seth can’t have set up a Windows computer for some time as crapware has been the bane of IT techs for years. At the 2007 Consumer Electronic Show Micheal Dell notoriously pointed out this crapware was worth $60 per computer.

    Dell’s point was valid in one respect; if you are selling at unsustainable price points then you have to do everything you can to improve your profit margins.

    At the beginning of 2010, Dell find itself locked in the low value, low margin end of the industry with a declining market share at a time when US consumers are banging shut their wallets. It’s fair to say Micheal has reaped what he sowed.

    It’s unfair to just single Dell out – cost cutting, upselling and downright double dealing is endemic in the IT and electronics industry and the vendors only have themselves to blame as they trained customers to fixate on price and then struggled to claw back a decent profit.

    The tech sector has betrayed its customers and only has itself to blame for the lack of trust and declining profits.

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  • The new business tools

    Probably the biggest highlight of a fast, hectic 2009 was November’s X Media Labs in Sydney which illustrated just how the world is changing as a result of new media channels, faster Internet and more powerful computers.

    The organisers of X Media Labs, Brendan Harkin and Megan Elliot, describe it as “a meeting place uniquely designed to assist companies and people get their own creative ideas successfully to market, through concept development, business matching, and direct access to world-class networks of creative professionals.”

    Brendan and Megan held the first event at the Sydney Opera House in 2003 but have since relocated to Shanghai. The Chinese connection was strong with the guest speakers including property developers and social media entrepreneurs.

    Wang Xing, founder of Chinese social networking sites, Fanfou and Xaionai impressed everyone with the size and growth of the Chinese Internet market. It left no doubt where the eyeballs and where the wallets will be as we continue into the 21st Century.

    More challenges were presented by Zheng Xaioping, founder of property developer BAZO, who went through the growth of Chinese cities and the directions government and investors are taking within those cities.

    A local success was Zareh Nalbandian of Sydney’s Animal Logic who showed some behind of the behind the scenes footage of Happy Feet and a US advertising campaign for fast broadband featuring a jet engine assisted shaved rabbit. It illustrated how exciting, quirky and innovative work is being done in Australia.

    To show the US isn’t out for the count, Susan Bonds, president of 42 Entertainment, showed how bringing together many strands of the online digital media tools created a massive alternative reality game for the movie Dark Knight.

    Probably the most exciting presenter was Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin from the University of California’s Santa Monica Nanotechnology Allosphere. Her talk, a version of which is on the TED website, showed the possibilities in the new economy as arts, science and technology come together.

    Not everybody has the resources of the US National Science Endowment, a big movie studio, or the Chinese government to support their projects, but as Brasserie Bread showed a few months back you can create a buzz using some of these tools quickly.

    That’s the challenge for all of us over the Christmas break – to figure out how we can harness the power and opportunities the second decade of the 21st Century is going to present us.

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  • Spam of the year

    full mailboxWhile cleaning out the mailbox of IT Queries I found this among the spam messages;

    HELP! I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia and being forced to post spam comments on blogs! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. They’re coming back now. Please send help!

    Sometimes you can’t help but laugh.

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