Conversational Media Marketing

I've noticed a thread that seems to run through the social web -- an emphasis on the use of personal branding as a way to build the associated company brand.

There are a number of examples:

• Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing at BearingPoint (see conversation I had with Paul below)
• Chris Brogan, VP of Strategy and Technology at CrossTech Media
• Jason Falls, Director of Social Media at Doe-Anderson, a leading Louisville, KY advertising agency
• Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim, Charlene Li of Forrester fame (Peter and Charlene are no longer associated with Forrester, but you get my point)

Perhaps the way to think of these people is as spokespersons for their company.

When Jason Calacanis quit blogging last month (he really did) and turned to the use of email newsletters, by the reaction in the tech community you'd think it was the first time someone thought of using email as a marketing or business communications tool.

Jason has always been a trend-setter, so I suspect others will follow his lead. (In fact, others already are.) I do think it interesting that he turned to something as old-school, tried-and-true as email. Like the title says, what's old is new again.

I've longed believed blogs and email can work together as a marketing "one, two knockout punch!" (Corny, I know, but I like the metaphor.) I've been writing about it and it's recently become a topic renewed , Calacanis notwithstanding.

Blogs and email can provide any company, large or small, with an inexpensive way to share its message and build its brand.

Still, it will be interesting to see if others follow Jason's lead. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if even Scoble made the shift!

UPDATE @ 3:19 p.m.: Just saw this report on B2B Magazine which says social media is affecting email marketing.

I was reading a blog post from email marketing platform company Vertical Response recently which talked about the importance of using Web site video.

There is no question that, thanks to sites like YouTube, , Yahoo!, Kyte, NewTeeVee. Vimeo and many others, the use of online video is growing fast. You, too, can get in on the trend. In fact, you should.

Read the rest of this post at the Bizzuka blog.

(The post includes information about uploading video to the Bizzuka CMS, but you can disregard that portion. It contains information for general use as well.)

Imagine, for a moment, a world without the Geico gecko or the Mac vs. Microsoft guys. A world where advertising no longer exists, at least not as we now know it. Can you? Neither can I, but a post from Mediapost blogger Dave Morgan got me thinking about it.

"Is the age of the brand slogan and advertising ending, about to be displaced by the 'age of authenticity' and conversational marketing?," Morgan asks.

Morgan, himself, suggests that notion is extreme and I have to agree. Yet, in an age of conversational media and the fact that most people trust "other people like me," branding as we've typically conceived it has changed.

The strength of a brand is now commensurate with the amount of conversation about it. As Morgan puts it, "[B]rands now live and die by how they perform for their customers, because the Internet permits those customers service stories to be amplified and shared. The power of those experiences is already starting to eclipse anything that marketers can do with advertising."

To that I reply, "Yippee!"

A few months ago in a blog post about Google OpenSocial, Internet pioneer Dave Winer said, "Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information."

A few days ago Blog Business Summit blogger Jason Preston echoed Dave's sentiments when he said, "One of the things about advertising on the internet is that it seems to blend more and more with marketing and with content. Good, relevant advertising is content."

Today CMSWire blogger Gerry McGovern said, "Google has become one of the most successful companies in the world by selling lots and lots of these 17 words of text that help us find what we are searching for. In a money-rich, time-poor economy, helping busy people complete their tasks is the new advertising."

What is it that each of these comments have in common?

I'll never forget the day I attended Dr. Ralph Wilson's seminar on Internet marketing in Atlanta a few years ago. It consisted of a well-planned, logical progression of practical information on how to use the Internet as a marketing vehicle. In all the wealth of knowledge Dr. Wilson shared that day, one thing stood out, an illustration he used of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

Dr. Wilson said that, if you looked closely at the wall, you would notice cracks between the blocks of stone that comprised it. He referred to them as "niches." He said the pilgrims would stuff these niches with slivers of paper, which were their prayers.

Dr. Wilson went on to recommend that we do the same thing in our marketing; rather than trying to scale the entirety of the wall, we should find an unfilled (or partially filled) niche and fill it. Brilliant!

I incorporated both the principle and his illustration into the book Realty Blogging, suggesting that blogs are good niche marketing penetration tools.

Recently, AdAge editor, Jonah Bloom, sent a note to AdAge Power 150 members asking us to share our ideas about what we think would be the "single technology, site or application" most deserving of marketers’ attention in 2008 and why.

Never one to pass up an opportunity to get my name in print (:->), I submitted a comment, which was posted. However, part of it was left off. Just for the record, here's the full comment as it was sent:

Online video/TV is THE technology to watch in 08. There seems to be a seismic shift toward digital distribution of video content, more and more video sites are being created, and there is a small camera revolution going on (which includes webcams) that portends a continued rise in user-generated video content.

YouTube was just the beginning. Now, there’s ooVoo, seesmic, revver, Jumpcut… the list goes on and on. Oh, and FastCompany.TV that Scoble just inaugurated. Add to that the fact that people are scurrying to their computers in droves to watch television programs which, themselves, are being equipped to serve as television monitors. More than any other technology, including social networks, online video is it.

Note the sentence which says, "Add to that the fact that people are scurrying to their computers in droves to watch television programs which, themselves, are being equipped to serve as television monitors." Some bad sentence structure there... should have read something like, "Add to that the fact that people are scurrying to their computers to watch television programs on sites like Hulu, Netflix or DailyMotion." Anyway, you get the point.

I believe 2008 will be the year of the social network. With DIY services like Ning, Kickapps and others, it's bound to happen.

Personally, I see the development of these  mirroring what happened in the blogosphere in 05 and 06. But, that's me.

What do you think? Will we see niche social networks developing at a rapid pace? If so, what will be the implications?

Also, please feel free to list any niche socnets of which you are aware. Thks.