Digital Marketing, Media, PR Analysis And Insight – The Future Buzz

Ben Elowitz contributed an article to The Huffington Post with the unfortunate title: “Facebook’s Like Button: A Force Powerful Enough to Save Media from Google Search.” The entire premise that media needs to be “saved” from Google search is a line that has been trotted out for years. However it’s one that makes no sense. The article also glowing looks to Facebook’s like feature as somehow being a saving grace for newspapers. That is extremely wishful thinking.

In addition to keeping this marketing blog, I’m active on a variety of other blogs and digital publications. Today or over the weekend, kick back with some coffee and get caught up with my latest ideas published external of The Future Buzz:

For quite awhile, I was using images in my posts frequently. Almost daily. Enough that stock photography company Shutterstock took notice and we worked together to create a blog outreach program. Images are vital to modern blogs. But images are, in essence, style. Important, but mean nothing without substance.

More than one year ago, I wrote that Matt Cutts is representative of next generation PR. So it was great to see Aaron Wall at SEO Book write a post on the top 10 SEOs and included this bit about Matt:

Matt Cutts is better at public relations than 99% of public relations experts are. He is able to constantly promote Google products and engage in issue shaping while rarely being called out for it. And he rarely makes *any* mistakes on the public relations front…

Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation wrote a post titled: Unlike Advertising, Social Media Can’t Save A Bad Brand, Product Or Service. I’ve taken issue with Mitch’s content previously (and also agreed with him). I’m going to take issue again today.

The idea of “social media addiction” (yeah, let’s put that in quotes) is one which makes no sense.

As Mike Masnick at Techdirt observes:

Over the last decade or so, there’s been something of an… well… addiction to calling any sort of overuse of a product an addiction. So we’ve seen email addiction, web addiction, online porn addiction, video game addiction, internet addiction, and mobile phones or other gadget addictions among other things.

I wrote the other week that the idea of time normalization in social media is a fallacy. But it goes further than just time being a fallacy. The marketing industry is obsessed with looking for normalizations everywhere. And other than providing a feel good number for presentations – it’s an exercise in futility. Well, other than the fact that it generates PR for those who come up with the numbers. It’s infotainment at best, misinformation at worst.

If you’re in print media, hemorrhaging revenue and done nothing you still need to rethink your business model. The iPad, DRM or other closed platforms are not your savior. And merely putting your content online is hardly enough.

Recall law 2 of Robert Greene’s 48 laws of power: never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies. The idea of using enemies is something most never even consider, but using enemies as part of your web strategy can be potent.

There’s no such thing as a blanket answer in digital marketing and PR. Just because company X is doing something is not by itself a reason your company should too.