Then Web 2.0 crashed on our shores a few years ago, washing in social media and revolutionary web platforms like Facebook and Hulu.com. What’s interesting about this shift is the audience social media created. Techies, artists, writers, housewives, students, innovative business leaders, anyone with an opinion and others looking for connections beyond their daily toil flocked to Vox, Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, Linked In, and more. They formed communities, groups, relationships, and trust arising from dialogue among one another in ways not imaginable by marketers in the past. It’s weird, it’s wonderful and it’s happening now.

The reality is that this new media, a term I use to describe the aggregate of social media and new web offerings, has disrupted marketing. For example, blogging news sites like the Huffington Post changed the way public relations is conducted. Social utilities like Facebook allow businesses to easily run ads and changes the way ad agencies can reach target audiences, while social media platforms like Vox, where people from tight, trusted neighborhoods converse about everything from their parents divorce to whether to purchase a VW or a BMW…changed web marketing as we knew it.

The traditional paradigm of engaging customers based on creating awareness, to create interest, which leads to a desire that prompts a consumer to purchase has been replaced by a new model that has more steps, but, paradoxically is more immediate and happens virtually 24/7.

In the new media model consumers take different steps purchasing. We call it the “Five R’s”;

• Referral – A potential customer can easily be referred to your product or service by a friend or neighbor from their social network, and often the customer has never met the friend or even know their real name.
• Research – Based on their online buddy’s referral (or not), they can research your brand on Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Conversely, you must now research where they are, what sites they travel, and what they have to say about your brand to be effective in reaching them.
• Relationship – In doing so they may develop relationships with other brand users and further discuss brand attributes. They are developing a now have a relationship with your brand and are arriving at the purchase decision.
• Reliability – Now the ball is in your court, and you must easily, seamlessly capture the purchase, facilitate the delivery, and follow up with customer service. This is more and more becoming what is known as the annoying ‘pile-on’ method, which often erodes your credibility. Comcast will drive you nuts with this approach after a botched service implementation.
• Responsiveness – Being responsive to your customers needs in a reliable manner is most important. Drop the ball on this and immediately negative responses will begin to emerge on the very sites you are searching for customers. Two great examples of doing this right are Zappos and Amazon.

With the current wave washing away the way marketing has been conducted in the past, which is often last month in new media time, the question often posed by clients is: What’s a marketer to do? The answer is innovate. As the late great Hunter S. Thompson once quipped, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Marketers need to look the weirdness of social media in the eye and turn social media pro. They need to think like those they wish to engage and go where they are; and do so with the credibility and authenticity the defines the trust that hinges the culture of the new media together. If you’re a CEO you will get much more mileage out your blog or tweets if you pen them yourself, even if you are not a witty communicator like Tony Hsieh of Zappos. The medium is the message, and authenticity rules the message.

The way to ride this wave is to embrace change, innovate, and partner with those who are riding it with knowledge of the waters they navigate and an eye on the future. After all, in new media time, it will soon be the last wave.

Though I could go on about paying homage to the tragic deaths of a handful of celebrities and TV personalities this week, I won’t. There are a million sites and a million blogs and a million groups on Facebook for that. So, I hope you don’t mind if I set the emotions aside and instead focus on the technology that empowered me to stay connected with these stunning current events, as well as a question to you: where were you?

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, social media has in many ways risen above traditional media in delivering up-to-the-minute information on a number of topics (Iran, anyone?). The past couple of weeks in particular have made for some tumultuous times and have provided incredible examples of how social media works in the context of our times.

So, where were you when David Carradine, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcet, Ed McMahon, or Billy Mays left us? How did you use social media to find out about it, communicate others, organize groups, etc? I’d love to know! Let’s see some comments about how we’ve used these incredible tools to talk to each other.

MySpace seems to be suffering the same fate as the Our Lady Peace, the band who’s lyrics I so artfully butchered.  Like the mid-nineties pop-rock outfit, MySpace got its 15 minutes of fame and now seems to be on its way to the land of irrelevancy. 

In the world of social networking, it’s all about what’s hot, what’s new, and what everyone else is doing. We’re nothing if not a society of sheep! 

In an article from CNN, the author points out the decline of MySpace and the rise of Facebook, as well as the social media tool that may eventually dethrone Facebook: Twitter.

Really, who uses MySpace anymore? It may be better for blogging, and it is certainly a better site for bands, but for the average Joe who wants to connect with his network, Facebook and Twitter have successfully usurped MySpace as the industry leaders. 

What’s your take?

Take public school systems for example. When there are budget issues (and believe me, us Californians know about budget issues), the art and music departments are shut down and the teachers running those departments get the boot. This is all too sad, but I guess some school districts feel that the investment we make in trying to develop creative-minded individuals who are not just left-brained robots is a boondoggle.

In the business world, it’s the marketing and advertising arm of the company that gets downsized. After all, pretty pictures of a company’s products are more of a luxury than manufacturing and other departments, right?

I hate to talk about the economy, as anyone who has had any contact with any news source over the past year and a half is probably tired of talking about it. To that end, I won’t dwell on the economy, but rather the shift in marketing resources and the rise in email and social media marketing.

Excited? Good! You should be.

I was reading an interesting article from the Associated Press about how companies are turning to more cost-efficient, internet-based alternatives to their traditional marketing tools.

That article is a well-written testament to the power of the internet when it comes to contemporary marketing strategy. In a day where companies are forced to steeeee-retch their dollar, e-mail marketing campaigns and websites like MySpace and Facebook are coming to the forefront as powerful and cost-efficient marketing tools.

Some companies have gotten clever and have put together an integrated online marketing strategy. This would involve putting up a website as well as accounts on all of the popular social networking websites. Then, updates are made on all of the websites to reflect what is happening with the company. Smart organizations track who follows them on which website, and they use the information they gather to come up with focused, targeted advertising campaigns. As the Associated Press article says, there is some cost involved in terms of paying the right people to execute such a strategy, but there is no doubt that that the return is significant.