This was in an article over at CNN: “Facebook calls this new social paradigm the “Open Graph,” and Zuckerberg called the shift “the most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the web.”"  We’ve been talking about this “Social Graph” on the blogosphere for what I feel like is at least 3 years now. And now Zuckerberg decides to talk about it in a press conference and everybody is all over him for his GREAT idea.  Oh, and Facebook added a “LIKE” button. Uhm.. you mean like the folks over at Digg and Stumbleupon did years ago? This whole shpeel that Zuckerberg went on about at his latest press conference is a guy just repeating what everyone else online has been talking about or doing for years, but because he’s an “icon” people NOT online are treating it like it’s fresh and new.  Same thing as Steve and the iPad.  Yes, it’s a cool device, yes, it is getting great reviews. But is honestly a large iPod Touch with a few new features, it is NOT a rocket car, or a transporter.

Sorry for this rant, but I really don’t like Zuckerberg.  His assertions that Facebook is going to topple Google is just for the moment absurd.  You have a social network. Yes, it is the most popular but let’s not trick ourselves into believing things that aren’t true.  Google has a sound biz plan with the assumption that someone searching for a product type might actually want to buy it.  Facebook? Just because I throw up a status update that “I loved my bike ride up Blue Mountain yesterday” does not mean that I’m in the mood to buy a new book.  I just do NOT see how social networks are going to become the next Amazon, or hulu.  Heck, I use Hootsuite and almost never even log in to Facebook to see

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I’m sure this isn’t a new topic, but I thought I would talk a little bit about brand management online for small businesses.  Many small businesses believe that because they are not using the internet that their business is not being talked about online. This is frankly stupid.  There are many sites out there like yelp and zagat that allow users to create profiles for businesses, services, restaurants, etc. and then vote on their experiences. Also people have their own blogs (like this one!) where they can rant and rave about the guy they bought their new car from or the mom & pop coffee shop they went to last week.  And this doesn’t include forums, wikis, twitters, facebooks, and what have you that let people say pretty much whatever they want.  In other words, just because you are not online talking about your small business doesn’t mean that other people aren’t.  To that end you need someway to monitor what people are saying about your company, or website (if you have one) online.  There are a couple of options here: 1. would be to spend every hour of every day doing google searches, crawling over tweets, facebook, yelp, and all of those other sites mentioned above 2. pay someone to do this for you 3. dupe an intern into doing this for you 4. pick up some software that you have to pay for to do it 5. use Google Alerts.  For most small businesses options 1-4 are pretty prohibitive.  So I’m gonna talk about Option 5.  Google Alerts. Alerts is a free system provided by Google that allows you to enter various keywords and then get either a daily digest or an instant email when something is posted with those keywords.  So what I usually do for my clients is to create a Google Alert with their company name inside of “”. This means that by and large if someone write an article, posts on a forum, etc with that company name I will get an email about it. (I usually create these an instant alerts as I want to know ASAP when someone comments about a client). Now sometimes these will not be talking about your business especially if you have a common word as your company name or if it is a common company name.  But the nice things is that these alerts work just like google so if the company was AlteredGames and it is based in Missoula, the alert would be “AlteredGames” + Missoula. This would return all mentions of AlteredGames and Missoula.  You could also add other identifiers so you knew it was your company.  Next I like to set up an alert or two that is a daily digest and is more concerned with the industry or area. So if we were doing a restaurant in Missoula, the alert might be: “local restaurants” + Missoula. This just lets me monitor what’s being said about the general area, and may provide some good places to drop a link or a comment about the business to help drive traffic.

These are just a few tips for a very powerful tool that Google provides. The biggest thing is just to remember, if you are doing your job right SOMEONE is talking about you online even if you aren’t. And in this day and age it is important if you are not the one leading the conversation that you are at least aware of what is being said.

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This was a great article from Mario over at scrappymarketing.

Last week I was fortunate enough to be invited as a guest speaker to the Drucker School of Management. What a great place that is. Anyhow, I was gifted a couple of different Peter Drucker books which I have been reading over the past few days. One of the things that Peter Drucker frequently mentions is the need to recognize trends that already happened. Don’t worry about predicting the future (nobody can do that anyways) but rather analyze and benefit from the future that already happened. Here are three consumer trends, which affect marketing in a big way, that are happening right now and definitely cannot be stopped.

1. Consumers are in control

I hope every marketer has realized by now that they can’t spoon feed consumers with information any longer. Consumers will seek out information about your products and services when they want and how they want. While you as a marketer can spend some money on advertising to hopefully inspire that process, you also have to make sure that your website can be found through Google, looks good on a smartphone and probably soon on TV.

2. Consumers are skeptical

So they should be. For years, they’ve been bombarded with overly biased commercial messages. And now they’re running across all sorts of “honest” information about your products on forums, via search engines and now on Twitter. There is nowhere to hide for bad customer service or lackluster product performance. We’re finally moving to a time where the best products become popular and not the ones with the biggest advertising budget. Until then, consumers will be very skeptical of all your commercial messages and double-check everything. As a marketers, you need to be transparent and make it easy for consumers to find the information they’re looking for – not just the information that you want them to find.

3. Consumers expect value

That is certainly true from a product level. Consumers want to buy a quality product at a fair price. If your product is overpriced, they will find that out through forums and online reviews such as on Amazon.com. More importantly, consumers expect your marketing to deliver some value as well. That means if you do a TV commercial, you better make it very informative (tell me something that I don’t know) or entertaining (Apple is a great example). If you want me to visit your website, please offer content that delivers meaningful value. If you want me to subscribe to your email newsletter, what are you going to give me in return?

These consumer trends are forcing companies to be more transparent and deliver actual value across many different levels. So while marketing has certainly become a lot more challenging over the years, it also should be lot more rewarding. These times provide a huge opportunity for marketers to really contribute – not just sell, sell, sell. Contribute first, then sell, sell, sell.

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