Attached is a great
article
by Fred Wilson where he advises companies to monitor what is being said about them in the blogosphere and to take a stand in the blogosphere for your products. I couldn't agree with Fred more on this.
In the context of the argument, he says the following:
"This makes the marketing job different than it was five years ago. You have to track what is being said about your company. The company that I started this post writing about clearly knows how to do that. So do most companies these days. There are a handful of really good tools to do that. But weighing into the comments and posting directly on your own blog are time consuming efforts that have to be handled well. When you are posting a comment or a post that speaks for an entire company, it has to be well written and persuasive. It’s like writing marketing copy all day long. And I think the CEO’s voice needs to be heard from every once in a while as part of this process."
But maybe this is where marketing is going. Maybe the marketing person can afford to spend a bit less time on the corporate website (make it a blog), the marketing collateral (put the URL on a business card), the PR firm (go straight to the market via blogs)..."
I have worked with tens of small businesses through my VC job in the last year and found that most of their marketing people are still using the same tools and techniques today that made them successful in the '80's and '90's. Unfortunately for the marketing executives, their world has changed far more than than any other function in their company, so the old tools and techniques that got them "there," no longer work in a Google flattened world. The good news is that the new tools and techniques tilt the playing field in favor of the small business marketer.
-- Brian Halligan
