When Mark Zuckeberg created facebook, his main purpose was to create a tool able to get people in touch and to know the day by day of your friend. The same motivation it was about mySpace before the Facebook’s birth. Motivation still alive in a large part of the 2.1 billion internet users.

Even if often blogger and social media experts use to point out the conversation as the main driver in social networking, reading about social media marketing and attending to workshops it seems that the human part of social media has been forgotten.

The “X step to” and “how to” approach suggested by many blog posts often highlight the human part in social media relationship but they treat it as a variable in a complex analytical model without describing exactly what does it mean.

Perhaps it is the natural development. Anyway the more you remember why people use social media and the less you think in business-mind oriented approach, the more you will be effective. So, It isn’t philantropy to just remember that in social media there are human beings, nor target or audience.

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Well, during the latest F8 which has taken place on thursday, Facebook has launched the Timeline feature.

Since January when has been annunced that the Zuckerberg’s Network has been losing users in US, Facebook started a development competition that is involving security and privacy settings, groups and fanpage. Following the launching in beta of Google+, Facebook has been starting to develop many features such as the more recents featured lists, the subscribing option, the real-time activity streaming and, few days ago, timeline profile.

Too much in less than one year? I think so. The ratio we have to consider on features is the learning curve required to users to accept and learning at the best the innovation. An overflow of update should stress out users and shall create a block in using it. It’s clear that Facebook goal is to arrest the potential competition of Google+, becoming an all-inclusive social network, inglobing twitter, friendfeed and google+ feature. Anyway the continuing and fast changing in user experience could create an opposite result, getting users far from the usage.

From the business side, the continuing improvement shall get companies in difficult on social media strategy, especially for those companies that haven’t enough budget to build a dedicated team to follow the innovation.  Furthermore, enterprises will have more difficult in monitoring ROI due to the continuing and fast updating of tatics required from the new feature.

Which will be the impact of these strategy of fast improvement?

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The future is the World Wide Mobile but… what does it means? Will we abandon PC usage moving at the mobile? No, we’ll not.

Source: Flurry Blog

Anyway in next months many companies will have to rethink their on-line marketing strategy.  Probably we will continue to assist at a proliferation of mobile apps transfering the web services into mobile devices. Also probably we will assist to more and more failure. Because going mobile is other than giving web content.

Source: Flurry Blog

The above chart shows well that Games an Social Networking are the prominent category used. It easy to guess that the challenge will be to create and invent services designed for a mobile usage, making them distinct from the web: integrated mobile payments system is only the easiest instance. For sure the office automation applications is another one. But … what do you think about mobile checkin at airport, like a foursquare or facebook places check-in? What if we have an airport application able to manage different airline companies for the checkin?

Advanced mobile applications shall be a profitable business in next years.

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Anyway the Marketing 3.0 guessed by Philip Kotler describes well the development in approaching marketing. Marketing is no more a “compulsory” business area aimed to drive offering to market or a communication function to connect the business to the market.

The aim of marketing today is more exactly a revolution in business model. The product and the profit are secondary goals. The main objective is to create “a better world”. Enterprises have more social and enviromental responsability. The slideshare shown below highlights exactly this side.

I want to stress some features I reconized.

• the new world requires to abandon the short-term goals
• the new world asks for re-localize businesses
• the new world need to be more collaborative each other

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Image Source: Alchimia Magazine

Sentendo parlare di marketing persuasivo, mi sembra di assistere ad una lezione di ipnosi. Ma l’ipnosi, perchè funzioni, deve essere uno-a-uno: il primo che muove l’orologio e parla; il secondo, zitto, ascolta e si addormenta.

Oggi mi pare un po’ impraticabile. E’ come se, restando nella metafora, l’ipnotizzatore muovesse il proprio orologio davanti a una persona che nel frattempo manda un sms all’amico descrivendogli la giacca del suo interlocutore e riceve il commento sulla cravatta  dalla segretaria dello psicologo. Non vede nemmeno l’orologio.

Fuor di metafora. Il marketing ha il compito di agevolare (e non controllare) la conversazione. Di essere parte di quella discussione. Di “persuadere” all’acquisto non per il colore al posto giusto o la posizione di un prodotto a destra o sinistra, ma perché ha il prodotto che è il risultato di questa conversazione. Certo, anche l’abito fa il monaco ed il linguaggio pure. Ma è  solo una forma di rispetto verso l’interlocutore, non una captatio beneviolentiae o un inganno. No?

People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

- Cluetrain Manifesto – Thesis 11

E’ in questo principio che, a mio avviso, si deve inserire il marketing (e l’azienda). Non come Vendor ma come “essere umano”. Il Web Design, il linguaggio sono il vestito che ti aiutano a relazionarti meglio, che fanno trasparire il rispetto. Non il pendolo per ipnotizzarti (sempre che ci riesca effettivamente).

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