Why do companies fear social marketing?

Why do companies fear social marketing (using blogs, social networks, and feeds)? The answer is fairly simple; they see it as unchartered territory. This is according to a recent Coremetrics survey of marketers. 

But you know what? Those marketers are wrong.

Social marketing and its mediums (again blogs, social networks, and feeds) is simply word-of-mouth marketing taking on a new form. 

Are the forms new? Most certainly. But the function of the forms is not new. People have always and will always look to the “influencers” and early adopters to see if they recommend a product or service.

So, if the word-of-mouth function has been around for decades and marketers have been using it for decades, then why is there this big fear or hesitation to get involved? 

Fearing what’s new and being afraid to try new strategies and tactics causes a company to become ordinary.

If you ask me, it doesn’t make sense.

Technorati becomes irrelevant

First, an apology. I’m sorry for the lack of updates to this blog. I’ve been focusing on work and consulting on other blogs. But I’m slowly starting to get back into the swing of things. Thanks for your patience!

Now on to the topic of this post.

Technorati has become irrelevant. Why? Because of spam. It’s true. According to Technoratie founder David Sifry, spam blogs account for over 99% of all the updates they get.

How did this happen? How can the once giant, #1 search engine for blogs become this way?

The 1st sign of this happened back when Technorati decided to include MySpace blogs in their search results. This was a bad move because it severly hurt the number of relevant search results. Instead of returning quality posts, you got useless tripe from 13 year old girls and college boys. The 2nd, and perhaps biggest blow, was when Technorati started to include Twitter posts in its search results. Now you got even more useless tripe!

As a result of these terrible decisions, Technorati has now become a search engine for spam not relevant thoughts on topics.

It all goes back to that basic marketing rule; focus on your core audience, not on everyone. By trying to appeal to a larger crowd (everyone) instead of its core (quality bloggers, the ones that are pushing the medium forward) they have become irrelevant.