Twitter changed everything I thought I thought about an online presence. I joined Twitter in January of 2007 but I didn’t understand it’s draw. My initial tweets were mundane, ridiculous things like “Going to a meeting” and “Heading home.” I didn’t follow anyone, no one followed me and I quickly grew disinterested. Over the course of 2007 many of the people I follow online were starting to talk more and more about how Twitter was making such a big difference in their lives. It got to the point where I felt like I was missing something obvious. And unlike MySpace, whose popularity was based on the social desire to be around other people, Twitter sounded more like it was an answer to a question that no one thought to ask. So I started really participating in it again late in 2007 and once I figured it out, it opened my eyes.
The Internet is the Ultimate Mind Sharing Tool
What I discovered was that people, not algorithms, provided answers and content that was more useful, entertaining, and enlightening than anything I’d ever discovered before. In the fantastic article “We Travel in Tribes” by Rands, he perfectly describes why Twitter works on such a fundamental level. After reading that article and participating in so many other failed social web sites I started to realize that most people simply don’t understand the power of the internet. Even though many people have been using the internet for over a decade, it hasn’t helped them understand the incredible potential of what they’re using.
Some of the early names for the internet were spot on. The “www” in web site addresses stands for World Wide Web, a name given by the internet creators to help describe what the internet was. Another name, albeit cheesy, was The Information Super Highway. The early users of the internet understood the potential and usefulness of sharing the vast amounts of information around the world. The internet was a web of information that was not defined by your geographic location.
Unfortunately businesses started looking at the internet as an extension of their brick-and-mortar stores which required an extension of their print and television advertising campaigns. To marketers and advertisers it represented an “always-on” connection to their customers that could be marketed and advertised to on a constant basis. According to this view, if you could find a way to drive people to your web domain you could hit them with your marketing message and the customers would buy. This ushered in the rush for online advertising dollars. The internet was the next big medium after radio and television. But this view of the internet was flawed. Unlike radio and television the internet was not there solely for entertainment. The audience wasn’t an audience.
The Internet Deserves it’s Own Category
The internet can’t be lumped in with newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. It can’t be lumped in with encyclopedias, dictionaries, and educational books. It also can’t be lumped in with business-to-customer or business-to-business sales. It’s in a category all by itself because the world has never seen anything like this before. And very few marketers and businesses understand what to do. They continue to use old measuring sticks for success. “Please fill out this form” is the online equivalent to “for more information write to” from television and mailer marketing from years past. Page hits are like counting the number of people who enter your store. Web addresses with special character strings are the online version of 800 numbers with special numbers to indicate if an ad is working or not. This has all been done before in the world before the internet and so few have made any adjustments at all, they just continue to do what they did before.
The biggest misconception is that customers, or anyone for that matter, will come to your website and consume your content in the manner you want it consumed. This can be seen all over the internet at company websites where the content doesn’t change much, there’s no way to subscribe to the content, and no way to easily share what you’ve found. It all boils down to the idea that the customer (or researcher or whatever) has to come to you to get what they want. They have to come to your web site address and your little spot on the web just like they would have to go to a store or a library in the physical world.
Put Your Message in the Hands of the People
Something I keep coming back to in my thoughts is that web sites should think of themselves as a broadcast rather than the pages of a newspaper. Instead of requiring people come to you and absorb your content, broadcast your content to the right places and allow people to tune into you. As the internet matures and younger generations grow up with the technology, they are going to abandon the old model of “you produce content and I come absorb it.” That movement has already begun with the more tech-savvy users.
Over the course of the past few days I’ve been driven to videos, photos, web pages, store sales, and more by the people I follow. Either through Twitter or Digg or my RSS feeds I’m finding content that I never would have found before. The very idea that I’m going to waste my time to come to your web site and comb through your pages of marketing material as I scan for what I’m looking for is absurd. There was a time I used to do that but those days are over. If your content isn’t out there and people can’t find it and share it then that means your content is being overlooked. You are officially missing the boat.
I don’t have the answers to the marketing conundrum presented by the internet. But I know that the old model is the wrong approach. Feeding your information to the right sources is one aspect of a successful online presence but there’s more to it than that. And that’s where I get a little stuck. I know I’m onto something, I just don’t have all of the pieces yet.