It’s always very flattering to see your work praised or recommended by others, no matter who you are or where the praise comes from (well, okay, there are some organisations and people I wouldn’t want to be praised by).
For me, one of the most interesting things of late is to see my work mentioned as a good blog about marketing. I’m probably one of the least likely people to consider myself and my work in the context of marketing. In fact, I made a joke by email to my friend, and seriously good marketer, Ann Handley (MarketingProfs on Twitter) that if I was to write an article on social media and marketing it would be entitled The Ihave no clue about marketing guide to marketing in the social web.
Yet, I seem to have cropped up in several places lately, including the AdAge Power 150, where I’m currently at #133 and the #5 Aussie behind several luminaries including Darren Rowse, Gavin Heaton and Laurel Papworth.
Gary Hayes makes mention of me in his post discussing the same list.
I guess that what I do with my clients and the things I talk about do include a component of marketing. But I’ve rarely thought about it in a specific sense.
So, I figure the question I have is what brings you to acidlabs to read what I have to say? Is it about marketing? Social media? Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0? Something else? I know I talk about a lot of different, albeit related topics, so I’m very keen to discover where you, my readers, find the gold.
Please leave a comment and let me know. Thanks!
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
While you may not think you are a marketing blog but as social media gets picked up more and more it does become a marketing arena. I have seen a huge growth in marketing people using social media tools and they are desperate for anyone to let them know how to use them. Hence why you are being named on the lists.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Without getting too embroiled in dictionary wars, for me, marketing is about making people’s lives better within a business context. This often happens around specific products and services, but doesn’t need to.
Marketers, by adding value to the exchanges that take place between individuals and/or companies, make people’s lives better. When they lose sight of the needs of the customer, they often make our lives worse.
I agree with Michael. Currently, your blog is enabling professional marketers to add a tremendous amount of value to their activities, and your writing is hopefully encouraging more marketers to relinquish the urge to control and to refocus on delivering real, remarkable value to people’s lives.
Are you a marketer? Probably not, and especially not if the definition comes from the AMI or other associations.
Are you talking about and demonstrating the benefits of making people’s lives better within a business context? Absolutely.
So by my reckoning, you’re a marketer. But all list- and link-love aside for a moment, who cares what the title is. Value is value, wherever you find it, and is best discussed in contextual detail anyway, rather than as an abstracted concept.
Of course it’s a marketing blog. In Acidlabs case the marketing is twofold.
Firstly you directly mention social media techniques that are increasingly being used by mainstream marketing teams (as well as commenting on failed attempts).
Secondly you use it for self promotion – you are directly marketing yourself through this blog.
A large percentage of our investment in social media is to increase our personal profiles (ie: market ourselves). It’s no coincidence that we use tools like twitter grader and twitterless.
One of this blogs core functions is to establish yourself as an authority (marketing yourself) to entice people to give you money.
conversations are the new marketing right?
Nikc, markets are conversations was the Cluetrain 10 years ago. It’s only now that Australian business is beginning to understand this.
As far as I’m concerned the entire web industry is really a marketing industry. The tech is really secondary.
Yes I have the same thing Trib. Sometimes when I get named as a marketer I feel like a fraud. Because I think we embody what we talk to clients about – we are the customer talking back. Marketers always see this in their own way, but there’s a lot we talk about that is not marketing.
Same with P.R. – we explain how companies can deal with us, as the Customer (again we are the customer) and they think we are PR gurus.
I really focus on remaining as a customer who steps over the divide, and explains to companies what the social web means to me, rather than a marketer coming back the other way. Keeps me honest and focussed on how I want to build our world. And helps me, as a customer, make difficult statements that as a marketer I’d be unwilling to make.
@Gary Barber pffft. Marketing owned web 1.0 – and came up with banner ads and clunky yet pretty brochure websites. They should keep their mitts OFF Web 2.0.
When I come here it’s for social media – but that is about marketing to some degree – but at least as significantly about community/team building.
Marketing, PR, advocacy, activism, relationship management, reputation management, product development, innovation, customer support, entertainment – social media is all of these and none of these.
But we have to label it somehow, otherwise how else do we sell it and, more importantly, who’s going to pay for it?
I wouldn’t be too upset about being called a marketer – new marketing (if we have to call it that) requires new marketers and those without the marketing background like you and Laurel, without the preconceived ideas of mass messages and main grocery buyers, dare I say it with a more human approach, are perfectly positioned to give advice.