Book Review: Marketing to the Social Web

BOOK REVIEW

Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business.

By Larry Weber, 2009: John Wiley & Sons

IBSN: 978-0470-41097-4

Take Away Message:

The digital consumer is not content to be a passive receiver of marketing messages. Therefore, marketers need to think about ways to use social media tools to become aggregators of content that serves the immediate information needs of each digital consumer.

REVIEW

Unlike other books on the subject, this one is not saying that the professions of marketing and public relations are undergoing a radical transformation. No. Larry Weber’s objective in his book, Marketing to the Social Web, is to provide a sketch of a specific market segment: the digital consumer.

Marketing: The next generation

In fact, Weber illustrates how the principles that shaped traditional methods for reach potential consumers still hold. Effective marketing speaks directly to the needs of the consumer, solves their problems. Good public relations influences opinions and shapes conversations. The goals have not really changed for marketing or public relations professions.

The only difference is that mass marketing is no longer likely to lead to a sale. More than ever, it is essential for the marketer to understand not just their niche, but the exact position the product offering has taken in that niche.

He refers to this as the next generation of marketing. The child of spin has a digital vision that sees value-add in befriending and collaborating with the consumer. This generation seeks dialogue, two-way give-and-take communication to help them make informed choices and provide meaningful feedback that makes future choices easier. This generation’s credos:

Credibility

Community

Future Building

Who is the medium!?

Early on in the book, Weber says every wired individual is not just a content producer and a consumer. Each of us is the medium. Each of us is a channel. The web’s reach may be global, but the audience is diverse and fickle. They can, and often do, share their opinions about products and experiences.

Those hoping to build relationships with their online customers, Weber argues, need to respect each individual’s willingness to exercise their freedom of expression digitally. They also need to understand that chatter will influence a brand’s image. Static branding is a thing of the past.

The How-to

Weber outlines seven steps to start marketing to the social web. These steps are similar to those outlined in Marketing 101 classes…think Tupperware and Avon and you can see how these same processes were successfully incorporated before the Internet became a commodity.

1. 1. 1. Do your research. Observe how your brand/product is represented online and by whom. Know your goals and target audience and then identify the key influencers in the digital realm (map this realm, digital geographical demographics are as varied as the real ones.)
      2. Seek out supporters and recruit them into your strategy for developing or working with an online community.
      3. Determine which of the communication platforms (blogs, reputation aggregators like yelp.com, e-communities, and social networks) are best aligned with stated goals and available resources. While making absolute distinctions between these platforms is not possible, they differ in terms of degree of engagement and content output.
      4. Build your community and engage with its people.
      5. Determine the metrics that will be used to measure the value-add of engagement.
      6. Promote the community.
      7. Evaluate and adapt, all things on the internet are iterative.

In the last part of the book, Weber goes a little deeper into the four social web platforms listed in step 3 above before talking about professional uses for Facebook and concluding with a prediction about the direction media will go as we all become more acclimated to digital communication.

Weber’s book starts strong. I found myself agreeing with much of what he said early on. But I can’t help feeling that he defeats his own argument about the role of social media in marketing on pages 105 and 106. He writes, “Once the novelty of the social web wears off, people will become more selective.” The solution he puts forth is to shape web engagement the same way editors shape their content policies for print magazines. Does he really think that this old model, one that is neither communicative nor interactive, is the right foundation on which to connect with and engage digital communities in the long run?

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