The Buzz Bin

Sep
16
2007

The Participation Ethos

BlogOrlando_BeThereJosh Hallett has asked BlogOrlando session leaders to post an early discussion of their session topic. Mine is participation is marketing, something well discussed on this blog.

The current Participation is Marketing theory (Chris Heuer) acknowledges that 20th century mass communications enabled companies to dictate messages, control the market, and use media to ensure brand message. With a fractured, traditional media marketplace and new social media channels, message control is dead. Paraphrasing Jay Rosen, audiences are gone and communities are arising.

Participation is marketing is not new (as Rich Becker likes to remind me), but it is reborn because of social media. Most marketers can recognize the traditional participation approach with community evangelists (usually non-profits and philanthropic efforts — see the National Business Community blog). Also consider the “man of the people” approach used by so many successful political campaigns.

Successful social media marketing efforts require companies to become a part of the community. In essence they don’t try to control the message, instead organizations acknowledge they are part of the community and give to it. They act appropriately with transparency and accountability as upstanding members of the community.

In short, participation means companies need to stop thinking of themselves as the center of the universe. They need to get into the street, roll up their sleeves and become people amongst people. Value creation from companies acknowledges they are an entity amongst entities.

There’s a sense of humility to the social media marketer. In essence, they understand that they are a role player in a larger, greater thing. Chris Brogan wrote an outstanding piece that described this participation ethos called, “I am a Marketer.”

And so, it’s a new media world that really returns us to old Main Street ethics. A shopkeeper within the town builds great relationships with his/her community members. There’s an intrinsic understanding that they need the community as much if not more so than the community needs the shop. And so the shopkeeper works hard for the community, and treats it well.

Social Media Case Studies

Note: No where does it say in this column that a participation approach requires a marketer to sacrifice results. That’s why it’s important to consider case studies. Included in this Blog Orlando Participation is Marketing discussion will be an effort to discuss strengths and weakness of real world efforts. Here are eight of them.

Four of these case studies came courtesy of Communications Overtones’ Kami Huyse, and her excellent post on case studies.

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by Geoff Livingston | Internet Marketing |

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