September 7, 2007

Seth Godin: Why Blogs Work But Social Networks Don't

Seth Godin recently did an interview with Selling Power explaining why social networks - as they are today aren't working.

He explained that permission marketing works and will continue to be a powerful tool. However, connecting me to dozens of other people - some I know and many I don't know - does not work. It gets fun when it's just you and a few friends, but as the list grows and grows and gets less relevant the benefits diminish.

Do people really want to know, via Twitter, that you are drinking coffee via Twitter? No.

What does work?

Seth explained that having people choose to talk about you, is a good thing and does work. Hence blogging and enabling collaboration by customers is a critical tool for businesses.

Blogging works because you can quickly post a message to customers who CHOOSE to hear from you and built within the blogging tool enable them to respond to you and others to respond to them in an open forum. Getting the conversation flowing is what it's all about.

When your customers are excited enough to speak about your product - that builds your business.

Of course hopefully the excitement is more positive than negative.

Enabling your customers to share their experiences with you is a powerful way to encourage other customers to buy from you. Home Depot encourages its customers to send it video of projects they've done with Home Depot - this is the way to get your customers excited.

The technology of social networking sites has huge potential but you must figure out how best to leverage the networking, collaboration and communication aspects for business.

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