Resources consumed:
"The Origins of Social Media"
"The Long Tail"
Learning objectives this week: I hope to gain a better understanding of social media outlets and uses as they relate to marketing in the digital age, and, since I am unfamiliar with microsegmentation, learn first what the term means and then apply that new knowledge towards the same goal of an improved marketing mindset. I am interested to see the Professor's perspectives on these trends as they have pointed out several terms already that I have not been terribly familiar with and I am looking for more ways to think about marketing.
The origins of social media article was great. I was aware of phenomenon like viral videos and blogger's contributing to things like the alleged falsity of the Bush Draft documents, but I really enjoyed learning about the trials on one blogger's experiences with AOL and trying to cancel his account. For personal reasons as well I liked to see the downfall of those practices because who really these days can say that they have never been victimized by some sort of "employee retention specialist?" The classic case in my experience has been with trying to cancel credit cards, and you inevitably end up on the phone with an obviously Indian representative with a completely unrealistic American connotative name like Billy not listening to your appeals for cancellation and talking over you. Perfectly annoying at best, and it appears downright damaging to a company if exposed at worst.
The other thing that I took away from this article is the shift of conventional wisdom away from the rule of thumb that a dissatisfied customer is powerful since they will be excited to tell as many as 10 people about their bad time and admonish others to stay away. More and more frequently we will see large clouds of discontent on web 2.0 develop into thunderstorms of customer rage, multiplying that one customer's voice many times over. Businesses now more than ever need to take steps toward constant improvement of service as well as avoidance of cover-ups of mistakes or any move to block transparency. Any business large or small that uses the internet for any aspects of its operations should heed this advice. I take great pleasure in knowing that even business that don't use the internet at all, are still not safe from bad customer reviews. The classic example of the home improvement contractor that is unreliable, doesn't finish the job, or worse steals from their customers is now up for review on sites like Angie's List and will not stay in business long. This movement serves to help both the customers that use contractors as well as the honest contractors to vet themselves and earn extra business. Win win for everyone.
The vast majority of the products are not available at a store near you. This is the main point of an extremely interesting article and theory that I had never heard about before. I vote for this article as my favorite in the class so far since I had never heard of it and it was very well written to explain the concept and how it is affecting popular consumable media and how it will continue to work in the future. I have a great belief that the future of business in most arenas will continue to tap the power of the internet and its vast resources to get better at selling to its segments that it serves. We have already seen the demise of the travel agent, the undercutting of traditional media companies like Blockbuster and Tower records, and the theory behind the power of taking a large number of unpopular items to the mainstream but multiplying that number by the many different types of idiosyncratic customers is a great concepts that is supported by the data presented in the article. I always love the ability of a program like iTunes to be able to offer any type of music I might be interested in, but the "long tail" of the non-hits is substantially more than I would have ever thought. For my own small business and entrepreneurship ideas, I think I will be better armed to change my mindset of identifying my long tail and niche customers from thinking about microsegmentation.
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