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What Everybody Should Know About Marketing
By Paul Richlovsky | October 21, 2008
A new blog post from Seth Godin, titled “Leadership is Now the Strongest Marketing Strategy,” argues that the key element of the most successful websites of today is the ability to allow people to connect with each other.
Sites that enable user-generated content appeal to the greatest numbers. Consider Wikipedia or Facebook. The idea that the most popular sites don’t tell you what to do has been said before, but it’s worth repeating.
This begs the questions,
“How does your website help people to connect? What opportunities do you give people to create their own content?”
If you can’t think of anything, then you have some work to do. Providing a platform for social connection could be the one thing that separates you from your closest competitor.
Do you have a blog that allows comments? A forum or other community page that fosters interactivity? Are you involved in any online social media communities? Do you get feedback from your customers on all the things you’re doing right as well as all the things you’re doing wrong? Does your audience have a place to exchange ideas and generate its own content?
Stuck? Check out this blog’s Social Media Roundup posts from Dominic Litten or how to use Twitter as a lead generation tool. Also see the social media section of the Fathom forum.
Photo courtesy of pedrosimoes via Flickr.
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October 21st, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Awesome post Paul, too many people are afraid of what current customers, prospective customers and previous customers have to say when they should be embracing these (often) well-thought out reviews and comments.
Will some of it be negative in nature? Probably, but those that have that discussion on their own terms have the ability to at least learn from it and understand others’ frustration.