Marketers are very good at taking useful tools and breaking them.
Let's look at email marketing for example. When it started it was an effective way for almost any organization to reach people quickly and cheaply.
Then people started spamming, engaging in all sorts of deceptive practices, sending out repetitive and self serving emails, etc.
After a while, email marketing was essentially broken.
Can you still do email marketing? Of course. It just takes more skill, dedication and thought then it used too.
The good news is that if you are willing to put a bit of extra effort in it, the benefits can be tremendous.
Effective use of any communication tool makes you stand out. Mostly this is because a LOT of people use them very poorly.
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It looks like marketers have broken social media as well.
A respected research company just published a survey with some fascinating results:
Since 2008, the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of consumer and business information has dropped by half, from 45% to 25%.
Remember how people said that all you needed for effective marketing was a Facebook page and bunch of "friends" who raved about your work?
That may have been true a while back, but it isn't now.
In our rush to exploit another cheap and effective marketing tool, we begged people who knew nothing about us to become our "fans". Companies started paying people to brag about them on Twitter.
And now social media runs the risk of being broken.
This creates opportunity for you.
If you decide to be thoughtful and strategic in your use of social media . . .
If you go for having true friends instead of the stupid grab for digital "bodies" that so many groups engage in . . .
If you use the tools for authentic, two way communication instead of the all too common PLEASE LOOK AT ME approach that we see online . . .
Then you have a real opportunity to stand out.
Sometimes, great marketing comes just by taking advantage of other people's mistakes.
Looks like now is one of those times.
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