Marketing Has Always Been Social

Marketing is a SOCIAL ACTIVITY—always has been and always will be.

The advent of social media has made it possible for us to see this again: we kind of lost track of it along the way and thought we could just tell people how to think, what to value, when to buy, where, and from whom.

Think of people in a village: everyone knows who does what well.

Who to buy bread from in the morning because they’re an early riser and who to buy cakes from in the afternoon, who to get to fix your broken whatever, and who to help with your kids at what ages.  People talked with one another CONSTANTLY about who is good at what.

Then we left the village behind during the industrialization periods of whatever region you want to think about (US, Europe, China’s doing it now…).  We didn’t have an easy way to talk with one another about everyone we could buy from.  Our primary source was one-way communication from suppliers themselves.  And those messages TOLD us how to think about the purchase.

Now, once again, we are back to talking to one another—only this time its GLOBALLY and personally at the SAME time.

The web has made it possible for us to do what has been natural all along.

Social media marketing isn’t the big game changer for the marketplace—it’s a tool to facilitate what we actually prefer to do anyway.

We need to see marketing as a way of connecting ourselves to each other—to learn about opportunities for services, products, business ventures, and anything we want to share.

At the other end of every message is a person that we can touch, move, and inspire to participate in something we care about—that’s my view of marketing.

I’m passionate about bringing this social practice of marketing into common usage—and I hold myself to a high standard of excellence to represent exactly what I’m talking about—that’s the diva-ness!

And what do you think of marketing? What is it and how does it work?