Social Media Top 5: My Marketing Buzzwords are Better Than Yours

My Buzzword-Based Definition of Marketing is Better than Your Buzzword-Based Definition of Marketing

Everything the tech world says about marketing is wrong

First: “Everything xxx is wrong” is Internetspeak for “Fight me.”

Second: Yes, there are a lot of people in marketing who didn’t study marketing. Thank God for that.

That said: point taken that basing everything around content marketing and “inbound marketing” is a terrible idea and pundits who say so should be shunned, even if their name rhymes with Beth Bodin, but to say they “don’t exist” because they don’t fit in with your old-school definitions is silly. They exist. OK, “inbound marketing” is a cynical branded buzzword invented by Hubspot, but they did a good job of defining it and why it might be important (a much better job than they have ever done at explaining what the company actually sells, but ).

The author goes out of his way to denigrate content marketing as not marketing (well, that was my reading):

“Content marketers” are doing nothing different from what creative teams have always done.

Careful, there- “creatives” remain a species in need of Darwinist disruption, particularly in advertising, in only to breed out cleverness for cleverness’ sake.

That marketers should know the basics is obvious, though it comes dangerously close to drawing the conclusion that a marketing degree is the path. We know that schools tend to be three or more years behind in adopting modern shifts (PR curricula took at least that long to adopt social media, with few exceptions). The trick is to accept the new ideas and place them where they belong in marketing strategies- which this article attempts to do- but be open to redefine what the mix does and which emerging channels are more important than, if not displacing, traditional modes.

Last: as much as I hate buzzwords, let’s not get into dismissing them if there is an idea they represent (even “inbound marketing,” though feel free to call it something different if the term recalls the horror of awkward corporate musical YouTube videos). After all: what are “marketing mix,” “the Four P’s” and “SWOT Analysis” but buzzwords coined to try to simplify some of the core aspects of marketing?

Content marketing? In its place, and the best practitioners know it’s merely part of a larger strategy. Those who don’t didn’t earn such wordy bombast.

Get on my lawn.

We Got Our Own Damn Site

First, let’s ignore the fact that The Economist is using a Kanye gif. I’d like to pretend that didn’t happen.  That said, this is an interesting use of Medium – to discuss the features of a web site redesign, and more importantly, to explain why economist.com is necessary, and viable, in a world of proliferating off-domain content platforms. This is now my favorite argument in favor of owning your stuff.

Post-app? But I Just Got Comfortable with “App!” or, Marky Zuck’s Every Flavour Bots

I’m sharing this largely because the headline made me chuckle: “Facebook Believes Messenger Will Anchor a Post-App Internet.” Leave it to Wired to be future-thinking. I’m not ready for post-app. It took me a while to be comfortable with the quality, stability and speed of apps on mobile to finally favor them over mobile web versions. Now the mobile web- or, more precisely, the mobile-friendly web- works even better – so do we need a new platform?

We do, if bots are to catch on. Facebook has announced that Messenger will rely heavily on chatbots. As my former colleague Christopher Barger points out, bots are great for big brands to scale response, and to do it where are people are (for now), Facebook. I’d prefer the buzz of the announcement to die down before seeing if this is the next big thing, and I worry that poorly-tuned bots will turn into spam or worse crimes of the kind Twitter Direct Message devotees could only dream of committing.

Student Athletes Being Dumb on Social Media

Student athletes are often encouraged to be on Twitter- I have seen it up close with my son and his teammates: it’s a great place to interact with the local high school sports reporters, as well as sharing information about games et al. We also see pro athletes are on Twitter more often than not, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and the rest. It’s clear that young athletes could use more training about how to conduct themselves online, as another group of people monitoring the web is the coaches.

(H/T Mel Webster)

This week in Private Personal Data Collection Fun Apps

Hey, Boston sports fans, how far do you live form Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox? Enter your info at http://feetfromhome.com and find out? Actually, don’t. I don’t mind the occasional app that asks for info in exchange for some value, but this one- I can’t believe smart people entered their info into this database of unknown origin.