Are you in the Marketing Profession? Warning Technology Is here.

Should marketers for companies feel worried about keeping their high paying jobs? Marketers tried to convince executives that big budget television ad campaigns would increase a products profitability. After research was done about big ad campaigns researchers found that approximately 2% of the public actually went and purchased the product after seeing the ad campaign. It seems as though the best marketing tactics are the ones that marketers are trying to master and that is the viral marketing. Good marketers learn how to adjust their craft to fit the current marketing trends.

Viral marketing by far is the best way to grow your consumer base. If you place a product out to the world and you can reach the innovators of your consumer base and they like the product then the rest of the consumers will find out about the product by word of mouth campaigning which will cost a company very little. Look at ICQ this product is an instant messaging tool that was initially intended for a small group of friends but after the initial users took a liking to the product by that group sharing their experiences with the product their market grew leaps and bounds very quickly. To this day I still utilize Instant Messaging services. Some government agencies removed the ability to download Instant Messenger software to their systems so I was unable to chat with friends and family any longer but guess what along came google chat, which does not need the user to download software. All of my friends use google chat now.

And now a days people are using blogs as marketing tools which is another low cost method of marketing a product. Companies such as Skype and Firefox utilized blogs in order to market their technologies to the world. This method worked so much better than the high end marketing campaigns that companies are trying to catch the wave and blog to promote their products.

In my eyes products like Skype are causing the world to shrink. As companies use web x, video conferencing and now Skype you can talk to someone around the globe as long as they have a web connection and a web cam. Are these technologies hurting companies like the airlines who may see a decline in business travel? Next we will be doing interviews using this technology. Companies may no longer fly you out to visit until after you accept the offer they will just send you video blogs of possible people you will work with and give you a virtual tour of the company as well. Are we losing human interactions with these technologies, I know we live in a germ filled world but should all of our interaction take place through the web?

Let me know what you think?

Oxymoron = Social Networking + The Federal Government

After reading a couple of the articles about Informal Networks and Social Networks, I had to smile and say that I have only seen these techniques successful in Corporate America. Maybe I am wrong but from the agencies I have dealt with and speaking with other people that work within other Federal Government Agencies, the biggest complaints that I have heard are that the agencies work in a stove pipes (meaning they don't collaborate well or at all).

As a contractor for Defense and Government Contractor, I was able to see the benefits of Social Networking. Our company utilized the Customized Response Method described in the Harvard Business Review "A Practical Guide to Social Networks" by Cross, Liedtka, and Weiss [1] in our Research and Development Programs. The company was able to merge technologies and expertise by keeping everyone inside of the company abreast of what projects were being implemented and the company encouraged collaboration about suggestions on how to make the project/technology better. This was done through forms of internal newsletters as well as there were brown bag seminars that each project would give an information session about what their product/technology could provide.

Working as a Contractor for the Federal Government for the last nine years I have seen how Social Networking has failed. Some of the failure was due to Managements' lack of understanding of what the real goal of creating a Social Network within their departments as well as lack of knowledge at the management/leadership level about the teams that they are leading and also influences of the contractors working for the various programs within the government.

1. How do you overcome the hurdles that the government is faced with to build a successful Social Network?

Looking at the governments current make up, most of your upper management are usually older men who usually have served in the military and have been promoted to their current position usually by years of service in the government not necessarily their expertise in that field. This poses a problem because they tend to hire a lot of their friends or comrades who also don't necessarily have the experience or knowledge base needed to do the job well. So they end up hiring contractors, which sometimes done as a favor, to come in and tell them what they need to do to make their program successful. This is the blind leading the blind.

There is also the case that multiple contractors are hired to do the same type of work for different programs under the same office. The contractors tend to convince the government official representing their program that collaboration is not a good idea for fears that the quality of work that is being provided does not reflect what the contractor is charging the government. One thing that I noticed while contracting for the government was that there was no uniformity or baseline on how programs were implemented within the government. My question is how can this be fixed when most of the issues of why collaboration wont work lies with leadership.

If you look at how the government works most of the leadership that is in place is through a Who knows Who and not How Much you know.

Can this be Fixed?

My First Blog Post

My name is Hugh Weithers, I am writing these blogs for my Social Networking Class at American University. While participating in these post I pledge "On my honor, all posts on this blog are my own.