How many ads did you view in the last week? How many adverts did you receive by email? or by post? how many of those were the “thank you for being our valued customer” type and with a limited time promotion & discount “only for you”? How many text message did you receive on your phone? How many chocolate ads did you see? or watches? or premium vodka or whiskey?
In his “thank you” email to loyal readers, Chris Brogan comment on the whole ad overload very genuinely: “I’ve got nothing I want to sell you here in this letter. You have purchased everything you need. And if not, it’s because you didn’t want to buy it. It’s the holidays … and you’ve had your share of pushy salesmanship, haven’t you? Instead, I just want to say thanks.” Simply perfect!
Now the interesting questions are – How many ads did you RETAIN? Which ad did you ACT UPON? Personally NONE! I was having dinner last night with a couple of friends, and I asked that same question, guess what their answer was – NONE! You may argue that 12 people is not really a representative sample but I”m quite certain, at least in my entourage, I will receive the same feedback from 95% of people I ask.
So does that mean that millions of dollars are being spent on conventional advertising to reach only “5%” of the people – I’m not sure how Mass Media can still be dubbed as “Mass” when it can no longer attract more than a minute fraction of the population.
In a recent post, David Meerman Scott explained social media in 61 words – I’m not sure how I can further summarize 61 words, but in “short-er”, Meerman points out that you can Buy, Beg, or Bug for people’s attention using traditional media like Advertising, PR, and Sales – or you can “Earn their attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free.”
Don Martelli write about how social media is being used to fuel up holiday giving – campaigns like Toys for Tots, Angel Giving, Charity:Water, and many more – in the US alone, online holiday giving is expected to exceed $4 Billion. Similarly, other companies like Microsoft, Sephora, NASCAR are using social media , mainly Twitter, to host their holiday sweepstakes.
It’s time to break out of old habits and create more value that will earn the attention your target audience. Advertising can no longer be about preaching but more about reaching and interacting with our customers on a personal level.
Are you pushing yourself onto your customers, or are you earning their attention? Think About It!
To Quote Mr David Meerman Scott
:”
You can buy attention (advertising)
You can beg for attention from the media (PR)
You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales)
Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page.”
How many of you retain the laughs that you have when reading a funny message? what if that msg was on facebook or twitter?
How many of you have seen funny profile pictures these few weeks? I have seen my share.
Earning the viewers choice doesn’t come easy you have to take all your creative energy and channel it towards getting that special thing that attracts more viewers be it a funny advertisement, a new plan to benefit from, winning a holiday… getting the message through doesn’t necessarily mean delivering it to the potential customer via email, sms… social media has the potential of getting this idea through to much more potential customers than you can imagine.
Facebook has released a press release that stated :
“# More than 350 million active users
# 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
# More than 35 million users update their status each day
# More than 55 million status updates posted each day
# More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
# More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
# More than 3.5 million events created each month
# More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
# More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
# Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans”
let’s take 1% of the total active users per day which means 1% out of 175 million which means 1.75 million users which is a big number.
how much do you think it will cost u the reach these users via conventional media?
Well you can reduce your cost and reach these users.
You can try it yourself and waste time it may work or may not work; or you can just give the work to professional people they take care of it faster and get you an even better result.
Think about these questions:
how much is your time worth?
how much are you willing to waste learning the ways?
how much will all this cost you?
Ralph Nader
Thank you for comments Ralph – very interesting statistics – and just to think that these are only on Facebook, what if we look twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, etc …
In a similar logic, Seth Godin wrote a post entitled “First, organize 1,000” – he talks about the infinite possibilities that are generated from coordinating a 1000 loyal followers – “their action s enough to change the world (and make a living)”
Ralph is a good friend and a fellow believer in Social Media Effectiveness. He specialize in website consulting mainly in search engine optimization (SEO). He has also developed an online directory for lebanon, where you can register your company or business for FREE – http://www.rndez.com.