I’m thinking of what’s been wrong with marketing for about 60 years. The whole idea that we are not people. All business used to be about people. It’s only a relatively recent phenomenon that we as companies hide behind “Brand” and thinking of our relationships as anonymous “consumers”.
The fact is that business is about people. If you are dealing with real human beings you actually care about them as people. In the old days “how’s the kids?” was a genuine interest in the other persons personal life and well being. As relationships scale into the hundreds or beyond it became impossible to maintain and the world converted to Mass Marketing.
Until now….
Now we have Facebook and have the ability to actually know the people we deal with.
For example: I have a colleague who just celebrated her grandmothers 90th birthday…makes dozens of holiday cookies and does amazing work with children....all in addition to being brilliant.
How do I use this information? Well…sometimes it’s not so obvious. But I just like having a human connection. Social networking is nothing new…it’s been part of our lives forever. We live in a small town where my wife grew up. We see her old friends almost daily…..people who have been part of her life since she was a kid…including old boyfriends. Do we leverage these relationships for business? Of course we do! Who do you think put in our pool?? LOL
So now think of the breakthrough with facebook. We never need to lose a relationship. We can have much more engagement with everyone we ever met….and people we would like to meet or feel like we connect even if we never get to meet in person.
FB has some problems for sure. “Hooking up” with old friends has become a sit-com cliché. Most marketers are trying to apply old media tactics of reach and frequency and advertising. ( was in a meeting of a large retailer talking about the millions spent on TV and “we have 2,900 fans on facebook”. )
But like all things new….we will soon learn that Facebook is an amazing tool….not to be abused, but to improve our relationships.
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