Not So Stupid Trends of Marketing 2.0
Noah Kagan wrote a post today on the Top 5 Stupid Trends of Marketing 2.0.
1. Our product is viral
2. Paying $10,000/month to advertise on Techcrunch
3. You need a blog
4. Digg will save us
5. Oh, don’t worry we have a MySpace badge.
You should really head over to Noah’s site and read the description of each one before you read my counters, otherwise you’ll probably be wondering what the hell I’m talking about.
Noah’s a friend of mine and he’s a very smart guy, but this time I think he’s gone a little overboard with the whole hippy marketing thing. Just kidding Noah. Anyways, it’s on bro.
1. Noah’s argument here is that there’s no viral aspect of the product. Ok, so maybe there’s a lot of people that think their products are viral and they’re really not. There’s still a lot of viral products though. I can think of 5 sites that I use on a daily basis that I still continue to tell people by word-of-mouth. Isn’t that what viral is?
I’m not really sure if Noah is right or wrong here. Even though there’s a ton of viral products out there there’s still a ton of people that think their crappy product are viral when they’re not. Can you explain in more detail what you mean Noah?
2. I can’t tell you if paying $10,000 a month to advertise on TechCrunch is worth it or not, I’ve never tried it. I have noticed that there are a few advertisers that have been with him a few months now so I think that says something. Doesn’t it? I will agree with Noah though, $10,000 seems like a ton of money for a banner ad on TechCrunch, but they keep adding more advertisers so who knows.
3. I think it is important for most companies, if not all, to have a blog. Yes, people really do care about what your company has to say. Even more importantly blogs drive traffic to your site, that alone justifies having one doesn’t it. While a company blog might not be for every company it’s ideal in most situations. If you’re still not convinced read this success story.
4. You’re right that a lot of the traffic that comes from Digg never sticks around. However, I’ve been on Digg a few times and everytime I’m on there my average daily traffic increases by a couple hundred visitors. For example, if I normally have an average of 500 daily uniques to my site it will increase after a Digg homepage where the average might flatten off at around 700. There’s also some good SEO benefits that come as a result of Digg. SEOmoz did a study on all the Digg homepage stories in a given period of time and found that the average story that was on Digg resulted in 1000 inbound links. Getting dugg can also result in being picked up by major new sources which drive much better traffic the Digg itself.
5. Widgets work! I’m not saying that you can build a widget for anything and expect it to work but a lot of people use widgets, and they if they provide value they work. Widgets increase your overall link count which again helps with your SEO. They also drive traffic. 30% of Technorati’s traffic comes from MySpace widgets. Think of the number of big bloggers that have Technorati widgets on their site, there’s a lot of them.
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of
I will do 1 comment per each thing starting at #5.
Think of widgets like a tattoo. If Nike offered you $5 to tattoo someting to your body would you do it. Technorati did not create a widget. They created a useful way for people to get recognition into their system.
Don’t get me wrong. A few widgets are great. the meebome one isn’t bad. the how much is my blog worth was cool.
bottomline: they are overemphasized and not as ROI as people think.
Noah, What do you mean Technorati didn’t create a widget? What do you consider all things on this sidebar here.
You’re right though, a lot of widgets suck, but there’s still a lot that have been done right and serve good purposes.
#1 in my opinion word of mouth is not viral. i think they can work together but they are two separate ideas. telling your friend is not viral. because your friend doesn’t inherently spread that virus to someone else. think paypal that is the perfect viral model.
this is a really deep topic. here are my quick thoughts on it:
i tell you, you tell hiten, hiten tells aneil. aneil shuts his mouth that is word of mouth
i sign up for something and email you. you email all your friends, they email all their friends and it never ends. this can have a part of word of mouth where people are telling their friends to sign up. i think it is when the product will ONLY succeed and there is a CLEAR incentive for you to invite your friends.
say there is a site where you need people to make it successful aka all social networks. some work better than others because there is more incentive to sign up and want to tell/invite your friends. i think a great study on viral marketing would be to look at the social networks that failed and why no one wanted to spread it. some viral things are undefined and just happen.
okay this was a ramble, hopefully you are still reading=) go tell a friend to read this. oh yea one more thing. viralness needs tools. aka shit to help you tell friends.
#2 for the advertisers that have been with him for a few months means either 2 things
1) it is worth it..or
2) they are stupid.
4. i wanted to just emphasize with the point that blogs are great and useful but not always necessary. we are on the same page on this one.
hugs.
#3 okay digg. digg is great. digg gets you traffic. digg gives you something to jerk off to when you make the homepage. problem. a majority of users are shit. the problem with sites is awareness. there are TONS of people who should be reading your site and should be reading mine. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU FIND THEM? sorry for the caps. that is the problem. are those people on digg for your site? most likely. for mine? not as much. so what?
so i need the right people and the ones that might subscribe to mine from digg are great but they not be the ideal readers. i think of it like this. if i asked all my readers for money the ones that came from digg and stayed wont pay me. the ones who found me from friends, links from others and/or other places are more valuable. i wont deny any traffic but i just prefer it more from other places. fair?
Widgets work!
Cameron Olthius, in replying to a fairly negative post by Noah Kagan, states a universal truth of the Widgetsphere:5. Widgets work! I’m not saying that you can build a widget for anything and expect it to work but a lot
Would you consider YouTube to be viral, what about MySpace, Google, 37Signals, and Digg. These are examples of viral products/businesses. I agree that a lot of people think their shit is viral and it’s not, so you could probably get away with calling that a stupid trend. BUT, there are still some products that are viral.
Your analogy is interesting. Personally I think that anything that spreads via WOM is viral, and from then there’s different levels of viral topping of at the one that never stops spreading.
I agree that almost all the traffic that comes from digg is worthless. There are exceptions though. Some users stick, Some popular bloggers link to your story because they found it on digg, You get links, etc etc.
It’s prefectly fair that you don’t like digg traffic.
“3. I think it is important for most companies, if not all, to have a blog. Yes, people really do care about what your company has to say. Even more importantly blogs drive traffic to your site, that alone justifies having one doesn’t it. While a company blog might not be for every company it’s ideal in most situations. If you’re still not convinced read this success story.”
I would have to disagree with this statement just a little bit. While I agree it is probably important for many businesses to have a blog, a business that is almost entirely local *probably* doesn’t need a blog (for example, a place that cuts hair probably gets all of their customers through regular WOM).
Other than that…I would agree that many businesses, especially those with a global presence or product, should blog.
Digg traffic:
I personally like seeing traffic come from del.icio.us (the company I works for tends to get more from del.icio.us). My personal take is that these folks are probably more “sticky”.