[timandren]

Contrary to what you're being sold, marketing through the use of social media is still not legitimately established for most businesses - the little guys. This includes every business that isn't a major corporate brand. But there is hope and it exists in your understanding of how people (and business channels) have evolved.

The stream
The social stream is everywhere and there are boatloads of fish swimming right before our eyes. Corporations have big nets to scoop up these fish. They have the power and capital to hire the top agencies and experts that understand the space, yet they still come up empty more often than not.

The small business little guys sit hovering over the stream, their eyes alight with the reflection of shimmering scales. They throw their hooks in the water embellished with nothing but worms and are lucky to get the odd bite once in a while.

The little guy
My job often involves helping the little guy. It's seems as if every day I receive more and more requests from my small business clients to help them establish a plan - a fishing strategy.

The questions I get asked most often are the following:

Social media is great, but...

how do we really make money?
how do we build our brand?
how do we harness it's power?
how do we use it to it's fullest potential?

In order to find the answers to those questions I help my clients to stop thinking about hooks and bait, and to begin paying attention to the fish themselves.

Social evolution
We must study our biology books and cross-reference our findings with an understanding of human behavior and how it relates to marketing. This may sound a bit odd, but I can assure you the answers you're looking for don't come in the form of old marketing methods.

Web 2.0 represents a form of evolution in that we have developed new tools of connection. Much like the behavior of the woodpecker finch of The Galapagos Islands, our use of the tools of web technology has brought about a social evolution. The fish in the stream have adapted and evolved, no longer taking the bait either because they are more intelligent (informed), or they have been burned too many times by advertising.

One of the most important keys to understanding this whole phenomenon is that it is counterintuitive. This isn't the 'If you build it, they will come' era anymore. The power of information, choice and media itself rests in the hands of the crowd. The maxim for this era is 'Where they go, you must be.'

Get involved
The stream is growing in size and more and more fish pop up everyday. Every business needs a marketing plan that is uniquely tailored to their industry - and most importantly to the audience themselves. The individual responses to this marketing at the customer level come from many personal wants as well as many factors that weith into that person's identity.

The social web is about community.* These communities range from large crowds of people, book readers for instance, to micro-communities as specific as Japanese-American, single, Gen X book enthusiasts. The only way to sell to them is to legitimately be a part of their community and contribute value to it. If you can't do it right, don't do it at all.

There is no cookie cutter approach.

I singled out the last sentence for effect. Go and read it again. What does the stream look like to you? How can you find better bait?