Paul Gillin Explains Why Marketers Should 'Think Like Publishers

If you've never heard  Paul Gillin  speak, skip the next few paragraphs, and go straight to the video below. You'll learn a lot.

Paul is a former technology journalist who has become a leading thinker and speaker about Social Media. His first book,  New Media Influencers , is the catalyst that moved many businesses to begin using social media. His new book,  Secrets of Social Marketing , promises to help even more businesses.

Paul stopped by our office in Cambridge before Thanksgiving, and I had a chance to sit down with him. We spoke about social media, blogging,  inbound marketing  and the ways marketers can thrive in this new world.

I posted a full video recording of our conversation below, but here are few highlights:

On Measuring the ROI of Social Media

"You have to look at the "I" side of the equation. The investment to get into these channels is very, very small."

How to Justify Social Media Investment to Management

"The cost of a pilot, the cost of testing is a rounding error on what you're spending on television media. So why shouldn't you take one tv ad. One tv ad will fund a very well-stocked company blog for two years."

How New Marketing Is Different From Traditional Marketing

"Many of the skills I learned in publishing are now the skills marketers need. Marketing is oriented towards delivering a message. You agree upon a message, then you deliver it repeatedly in multiple media and eventually you hope it sticks ... the difference with content marketing or conversation marketing is that you're delivering the message, and then you're saying, 'What do you think about that?'"

 

Here are a few of the sites Paul mentions in the video:

Steve Hall's site,  AdRants

Proctor & Gamble's community for moms,  Vocalpoint  

Dell's  IdeaStorm  

Matt Harding,  Where the Hell Is Matt?

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Fisk-A-Teers  from  Fiskars