Alan Wolk, The Big TT, is on a roll. Today he put a great post together on the “tiny bubbles” that we all seem to live in. He points out that while most of us are on the front edge when it comes to social media, new marketing, and web 2.0, the majority of internet users (and your target marketing probably falls in this range) really aren’t.
I completely agree that we need to be aware of more than just what exists in our little space, and anything less would be a disservice to our readers, peers, clients, and profession. However, for New Marketers and Web Futurists such as ourselves, our position can truly be a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, we have to know where the mass is. And that might be checking out MySpace for the first time, or even just trying to get a handle on the Amazon recommendation/review engine. There’s no room for internet snobbery (of which I’m admitted guilty of sometimes) or elitism. If part of your job is to know your market, then you have to understand their online habits, even if they’re “soooo 2005″.
But that’s only half the equation. While we have to understand where the mass is, we can’t really be there. For many of us, it’s our responsibility to know what’s coming down the pike. We need to be on the bleeding edge, and it’s up to us to figure out how (and if) these new technologies can help us grow and connect to the market we’re after.
In the end, it’s this delicate balancing act of next and now that really defines the new marketer or web pioneer. It’s easy to catch a case of Bright and Shiny Object Syndrome and always be in search of The Next Best Thing, but if you spend all your time on that, you run the risk of being completely irrelevant to just the people you’re trying to reach.
My name is Matt J McDonald and I'm a New Marketing Strategist based in Charleston, SC.
