|
[description], Story, any other text you want to use.
Miraculous Conversion
by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
http://www.ideavirus.com
The recent bloodbath among online content peddlers and digital media proselytisers can be traced to two deadly sins. The first was to assume that traffic equals sales. In other words, that a miraculous conversion will spontaneously occur among the hordes of visitors to a web site. It was taken as an article of faith that a certain percentage of this mass will inevitably and nigh hypnotically reach for their bulging pocketbooks and purchase content, however packaged. Moreover, ad revenues (more reasonably) were assumed to be closely correlated with "eyeballs". This myth led to an obsession with counters, page hits, impressions, unique visitors, statistics and demographics.
It failed, however, to take into account the dwindling efficacy of what Seth Godin, in his brilliant essay ("Unleashing the IdeaVirus"), calls "Interruption Marketing" - ads, banners, spam and fliers. It also ignored, at its peril, the ethos of free content and open source prevalent among the Internet opinion leaders, movers and shapers. These two neglected aspects of Internet hype and culture led to the trouncing of erstwhile promising web media companies while their business models were exposed as wishful thinking.
The second mistake was to exclusively cater to the needs of a highly idiosyncratic group of people (Silicone Valley geeks and nerds). The assumption that the USA (let alone the rest of the world) is Silicone Valley writ large proved to be calamitous to the industry.
In the 1970s and 1980s, evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and Rupert Sheldrake developed models of cultural evolution. Dawkins' "meme" is a cultural element (like a behaviour or an idea) passed from one individual to another and from one generation to another not through biological -genetic means - but by imitation. Sheldrake added the notion of contagion - "morphic resonance" - which causes behaviour patterns to suddenly emerged in whole populations. Physicists talked about sudden "phase transitions", the emergent results of a critical mass reached. A latter day thinker, Michael Gladwell, called it the "tipping point".
Seth Godin invented the concept of an "ideavirus" and an attendant marketing terminology. In a nutshell, he says, to use his own summation:
"Marketing by interrupting people isn't cost-effective anymore. You can't afford to seek out people and send them unwanted marketing, in large groups and hope that some will send you money. Instead the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."
This is sound advice with a shaky conclusion. The conversion from exposure to a marketing message (even from peers within a consumer network) - to an actual sale is a convoluted, multi-layered, highly complex process. It is not a "black box", better left unattended to. It is the same deadly sin all over again - the belief in a miraculous conversion. And it is highly US-centric. People in other parts of the world interact entirely differently.
You can get them to visit and you get them to talk and you can get them to excite others. But to get them to buy - is a whole different ballgame. Dot.coms had better begin to study its rules.
About The Author
Sam Vaknin is the author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East". He is a columnist in "Central Europe Review", United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.
His web site: http://samvak.tripod.com
|
live person
Once you're at the live person site it's a simple matter of selecting the exact product or service you want to purchase. Nothing to it really. Whether you're just looking for information, or you're looking for something to buy right now, we've got the links to the exact live person website you need.
As you can tell from all the effort we've put into building our live person site, it's something that we care about. You can be certain, when you follow one of the hyperlinks in the middle of this web page, or click on the pop up which might have appeared when you entered our site, we've chosen the best site about live person for you to go to. Thank you for coming to our live person information page.
Broadcast On the Net Index
|
Main Menu
Broadcast On the Net
Site Map
Affiliate Ads, Links, news, etc.
News for 11-Jun-22 Source: BBC News - Home Yemen's displaced Source: BBC News - Home David Moyes: Manchester United's great traditions have gone says Sunderland boss Source: BBC News - Home Steam baths and brandy Source: BBC News - Home Israel settlements: Netanyahu snubs 'shameful' UN vote Source: BBC News - Home Your pictures Source: BBC News - Home Allan Little: The year the world changed Source: BBC News - Home Is Nigeria's 'plastic rice' actually real? Source: BBC News - Home Ken Matheson: Former British Cycling coach says 'culture of fear' exists Source: BBC News - Home Arctic heatwave could break records Source: BBC News - Home Crash survivor: 'I put my seatbelt on'
Links
Links
Links
|