Why would you want these people to crowdsource for you? Look at them. Teenagers. Derelicts. Hippies!

Ok, that’s sarcasm.

I’ve been really into the idea of using other properties for marketing for a while.  I really got into a Twitter kick last year, and am still active.  I’ve played with every social bookmarking, social voting, image network, and tagging sites.  I’ve recently been working with my company on a social media marketing offering via Facebook.  It’s not a new concept, but it is.  It’s still very much fluid, and very much worth exploring.  A lot of companies turn their nose at it.  Yeah, but we’re used to that.

Remember when we used to try to talk CMO’s into letting us post on forums?  They were worried about negative responses (at the cost of the positive responses).  Then we had to convince the CMO’s that blogs were good!  We often got the go ahead as long as we had a dedicated moderator to cut out the negative stuff.  I admit it – I had that job once. But somewhereb thanks in part to the slow adoption from major brands like Dell, Zappos, and Amazon, the publicly posted negative feedback and reviews stopped getting censored.  When they would get censored, there would be a public outcry.  Progressive CMO’s were more worried about that outcry than the negative posts on their domains.  Good call.  If the products can stand for themselves, then let the social media prove it for you.  Now we’re talking about something truly valid.

The social media space really evolved this past year.  The community noticed the companies making these efforts, and taking these risk.  The companies were embraced for it.  Fans and followers became as faithful as NASCAR fans are to their brands.  And even when the quantity is few, their presence was very illuminating.

So here I am, getting really into marketing on Facebook, and finding myself excited about the opportunity of riding a wave that will either dissolve before reaching the shore, or smash into beachfront property like a tsunami.  My only regret is that I wish I had the foresight to jump on it sooner.  Actually, my regret is that more businesses still don’t have the insight to jump into it now.

It’s a tough sell.  I can completely relate to the business owner.  It’s very similar to convincing a CMO to try building a blog in 2006.  By the time they were all convinced, every company had one and none were being used properly.  A lot of noise.  But how do we convince the CMO’s that these teenagers, derelicts, and hippies are all extremely important components of your business, and not just because of their dollars?  It’s now officially a different world online, and I’m afraid business is once again way behind.  The CMOs are reading all the trades, and the “social media is where it’s at” articles, but it’s not sparking enough passion in the CMOs to pick up all the Lego pieces and start building.  How big does the bang need to be this time?

But what about the content, cross-channel implications?  They’re huge.  Maybe Facebook marketing doesn’t seemingly pass as much SEO value based on the structure of the Facebook platform, but SEO is so much more than algorithms.  It’s marketing.  It’s content.  It’s helping search engines adore your business, content, and value.  Facebook (and the content it provides) means more than most people think.  To me that’s the hurdle you have to get over first and foremost.  With passion.  Show that it’s rock n’ roll, yeah, but it’s not dangerous.  It’s cultural.  It’s last year’s next big thing.  Let’s get a move on, already before the crowd actually moves on!

With real-time search being rolled out, I asked questions about how Twitter would be able to handle the volume.  I don’t want to see the “Twitter is over-capacity” whale in Google results!

But however they’re handling it, it looks like Twitter finally made some money by opening their tweets to Google (at the cost of about $15 million) and MSN (at the cost of about $10 million).  Beats the hell out of the limited calls us regular folks get!

I was so sure it was going to be the Paypal-esque money transferring model first.  At least it wasn’t as cheesey as buying and sending virtual gifts for a dollar (I don’t care if it worked, Facebook – it’s cheesey!).

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