Marketing to My Ego

April 18, 2008 · Comments

britekite page I was sifting through my “ego feed,” which is a set of searches on terms like “chris brogan,” “podcamp,” and about two dozen other terms that matter to me and my efforts, and I found this post. So, I start reading to see why this came to me.

I find this:

I’d really love to get some of the Social Media Elite (think Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang) using Brightkite as well, because the more people using Brightkite at the event, the more we’ll all be able to actually connect (and stalk each other).

First, thanks, Jenn, for calling me “elite,” though I just think of myself as someone trying to get the word out. But ego-wise, it’s flattering, and she lumped me with two folks I like, Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang, who definitely use ego surfing tools as well. So, it was like a perfect storm of getting my attention.

I think Jenn accomplished her goal here. I took a look at what she was promoting. I clicked through to BrightKite. I sent my request for an invite to try it out.

Jenn used a blog post, RSS tools, Clipmarks, and the knowledge that I’m using RSS-based searches to find such information, and hit me spot on like a laser with her campaign.

What’s your take on her marketing method? It worked on me, but is that because I’m weak of mind? Is that because I’m too egotistical? It’s not scalable, but I’ve just told MY audience about her product, so it scaled well enough. What’s your thinking?

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  • So I rarely, if ever, play to the egos of the "Internet Famous" and Brightkite really isn't something I'm trying to push (it's not my product, just something I'm passionate about). I guess I got excited by an idea and ran with it.

    I think I have your email though, so I'll send you an invite! BTW we still haven't met but I do think you rock, how's that for your ego? :)

    Word to the wise. Don't send your check-ins to Twitter, it won't be received well by the masses. My lesson was learned today.
  • I think this is genius! Talk about tailored targeting.
  • Well done. Mission accomplished. Sure it's not scalable, but how many people will read this? Lots. How many times will this blog get picked up and/or scraped? Lots. Intentional or not, it got your attention. Now, if the site was lousy or the product held no appeal, then the chain of actions would have ended right there and you likely wouldn't have blogged about it. It will *always* come back to the value of the product.
  • haha you google yourself, ( i do it too ) :D
  • What a coincidence that you should mention Brightkite today. I just discovered it today, too, because one of the developers used it to tweet his location. It turns out that he's just a few miles down the road. Now I've not only found a neat local startup that I hadn't heard of before, I've found a whole new peer networking group in my area.
  • Well this definitely worked on me! I'm now a BrightKite member, and follower of Jenn's blog :)
  • Jen is greatly resourceful with her knack for marketing that's for certain, and BrightKite is an excellent new application. To answer the question though, this is a great flashmarketing moment, but without consistent similar exposure and from multiple sources, in the same fashion, it really only accomplishes immediate and the shelf life for this will be short lived. As goes most things on the web though, marketing ADD at its finest.
  • Think it was a genius idea.

    Unfortunately I also think it is only a mater of time before companies start combining ad targeting data with the kind of ingenuity she displayed.

    Give it a couple of years and I can almost guarantee that using ego surfing tools will bring on new levels of disgust and frustration as the results that come back are littered with the digital equivalent of "personalized" credit card offers that start with a letter addressed to "Mr. ChrisBrogan."

    Do I get a prize when I am proven correct 5 or 10 years down the road?
  • I don't really 'break news' about stuff, so Chris is the right guy for this, and esp Scoble.

    Thanks Chris.
  • Very smart! I wrote a short post earlier in the week about an April HBR article titled:The Four Things a Service Business Must Get Right by HBS associate professor of business administration Francis X. Frei.

    In the article, he poses the question, "Are you trying to be all things to all people - or specific things to specific people?" Her specific outreach to you worked quite well it seems.
  • worked on me! ;-)
  • I think there are three distinct stages of ego surfing:

    1. You're not "famous" so ego surfing doesn't yield too many new results (I fall into this group currently).
    2. You're "famous" enough that people write about you (Chris and Scoble and others fall into this category).
    3. You're so "famous" that you can't keep up with what people say about you or what they're saying becomes hurtful (Dooce falls into this category).

    I'm just curious about when people move from one stage to another.

    Chris, with all due respect, I hope you never move from 2 to 3. I hope that people never start saying negative things about you. I fear my pal Gary Vaynerchuk is currently moving from 2 to 3.
  • Chris,

    My first thought was how brilliant it is, and that I will now put your name in several posts to attract your attention, since you still have some attention left (just kidding, I don't think I could make it work for my readers).

    My next thought was, she wrote a post expressing how cool it would be if you were a part of it—does that mean it was purposely trying to "get to" you? Or does she sincerely feel this way? Aren't we all getting a bit jaded to assume that people who post things are doing it as a ploy and not because they mean it? (I know, she linked to you three. I do that for my readers, too. It's a wide world. Not everybody knows who Robert Scoble is!)

    Having just done a birthday post at my blog where among other things I did mention my fave writers (I don't do a blogroll, so this is a chance for my readers to see what I read), I would hate for anyone to think I said folks were my favorites just so I'd catch the author's eye.

    Jennifer's comment took care of that. It sounds to me like there was (little or) no ulterior motive. She thought it would be cool; so it will be.

    Thank goodness, because I still would like to be able to trust most people to say what they mean, even under the cloak of the Internet.

    Regards,

    Kelly
  • Chris, The Brightkite guys happen to be friends of mine, and I am a user, so its great to see you get involved.

    As someone who has been a "marketing guy" for a long time, the general rule of: right message, right time, right person, right offer still applies in social media.

    There is no reason that crafting a well thought out post that is directed at a particular person or group in order to elicit a specific response or action cant work in Social Media.

    Whats really cool about this, was it wasnt from Martin or Brady (the founders), but rather Jenn, who in her words "it’s not my product, just something I’m passionate about" is a user of the product.

    And, thats the power of social media.
  • @Micah it's funny because this all started through Twitter earlier this week. Nate Ritter had Brightkite invites, he gave me one, I signed up and I immediately saw the value. There really has never been a hidden agenda. Almost every decision I've made has been pretty spontaneous, and I've purposely been open about what I've been doing. I think the backlog of all my tweets from the past week would prove my point.

    I'm calling this a social media experiment because it isn't a marketing strategy or ploy. I personally think that if this approach is replicated for less than genuine purposes that it could really backfire. Brightkite will take off with or without me, I was just hoping to get as many people as possible attending Web 2.0 using it, so that we could all actually see if the value I'm projecting on the service actually turns out to be true. We shall see I suppose.
  • Oh, I wasn't really saying Jennifer was explicitly marketing in the traditional and paid sense. But, it certainly raises the question of how it'd work.

    @Dale- I hope to stay #2 forever (hahaha - like poop).

    Would it work if everyone did it? No.
  • Smart chick! :)
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