Citizen Marketing

The concept of citizen marketing is born out of a desire for connection and sharing coupled with the complete democratization of production tools, which has created an amateur culture according to Ben McConnell who spoke today at an annual entrepreneur week event called Kickstart, as part of his Citizen Marketers book tour. Overall it was an interesting and lively discussion on the changing face of marketing which has obviously been kept current as the tour has progressed due to the incorporation of recent events and videos.

After the book first came out talking about the 4 F categories of citizen marketers (Firecrackers, Filters, Fanatics and Facilitators), I sensed a likeness to the categories identified in the Tipping Point (Maven's, Connectors and Salesmen). I blogged about it here. Although the book is still on my 'to read' list, after today's talk I still feel these parallels are interesting and applicable.

Besides an interesting discussion on the 4F's a few other key learnings I took away from today's talk:

• Build Word of Mouth marketing into the DNA of your business
• You are your Google results
• The importance of the 3 V's when you think about your customers - Voice, Vote, Vocation
• Google is more than a Search Engine - It is a reputation management system
• New media is now a picking grounds for traditional media to find stories, instead of the other way around.
• Ben is a pillar of fashion with his cool shoes and sweet t-shirt:)

Thanks Ben for a great talk today and it was a pleasure to meet you in person. Good luck with the rest of the tour!

Blueline: New Media Conference

Be Your Own Media was the title of a one day conference held yesterday at BSU by a local grassroots marketing firm Blueline on using new media to create more authentic two way connections with your customers. It was the second event by this name held this year (first event was in April), and based on some questions asked of the audience early in the morning by Blueline New Media guy Tac Andersen it was encouraging to see that the concept of new media has definitely progresses in the past 6 months from being limited to the local innovators to at least the early adopter crowd based on current spread of knowledge on new media mechanisms, active bloggers in the crowd as well as conference attendance in general. And similar to the shift and emergence of new media marketing - so has Blueline itself, with a new look and feel as was as a company strategy that appears to be focusing more clearly on grassroots marketing. Congrats on finding focus.

Couple concepts I found interesting:
1. Napsterize your Knowledge

Not a new concept, but I like the way they phrased it. This is the concept that if you give knowledge away for free, you can still have a viable business (disregard the fact that Napster got sued out of business for their disruptive business model:). Many companies think that if they give information away, they will have nothing to bring to the table for their clients, but it is completely the opposite. The information builds trust between you and your customer on your ability to deliver. Maybe they could take this information and do it for themselves, but typically that is not their business and when they need someone to deliver a service, who will be top of mind for them?

2. Four points raised from a Book called Pyro Marketing by Greg Stielstra as it related creating customer evangelists (high on the metaphor scale which makes it easier to burn into your mind)

• Gather the driest tinder
• Touch it with a match
• Fan the flames
• Save the coals

3. Rule # 1 with New media marketing: Its not about generating traffic, its about creating relationships

Many people equate blog readership as the yardstick of success, and while this can bring notoriety and possibly some add revenue, blogs can still be a success with only a few niche readers. The 'Volume = success' is a carry over from legacy media in my view (e.g. TV media). If you have 10 readers of your blog, that actually would hire or recommend to you, wouldn't you consider that a success?

All in all the conference was a great value for the $25 attendance fee with the content as well as the opportunity to network with others people interested in this space.