Social media and marketing: D3

Professionally and personally I’m moving more and more to the social media world … led by people like Tara Hunt and Seth Godin and Kathy Sierra and so many others who are exploring what it means to create a compelling and infectious story that others will tell.

One of the rubrics or guides I’ve created for myself as I develop my thinking is D3:

1. Delicious
2. Discoverable
3. Disseminatable

First, delicious

In line with Seth Godin’s comment that while markets are conversations, marketing is a story, the first thing to pay attention to is internal: who are we, what do we do that’s remarkable, different, excellent, surprising, wonderful, etc.

The key is: it has to be delicious. What we do has to fit into our clients’ story about themselves. It has to be something that is understandable, palatable, and yummy. It has to strike a nerve.

Second, discoverable

Once you’ve crafted a delicious (and truthful!) story, can people find it? Where will they stumble across it? How will you ensure that it finds them?

Online, this means using geeky stuff like Technorati tags, writing great product descriptions on your website and updating them often, posting videos on YouTube, putting podcasts on Odeo and iTunes, and – critically – putting together a compelling and often-updated blog.

Search engine optimization is fine, but finicky. The best SEO is great content often updated – so great that it gets linked to often. Google loves new content that people link to. Even better: do exactly this while mindful of the key phrases your (potential) clients search on when they search for solutions to problems you solve.

And, possibly most importantly, it means participating in the conversations on blogs that relate to your industry. Read them regularly, comment on them regularly, and as you’re commenting fill out the website field with your blog address. Over time, if you’re relevant and remarkable, you will join a community that will participate in your success.

Third, disseminatable

You’ve got a story and you’re making it discoverable. Good. Now make it shareable.

Are you contagious? Do you make it simple for people to spread the story? Are there built-in mechanisms for people to become carriers and vectors of your virus? Is your meme self-propagating?

The more you can say yes, YES, YES to any or all of the above, the more likely it is that your marketing efforts will be successful.

[tags] marketing, social, media, web2.0, PR, branding, tags, blogging, corporate, john koetsier [/tags]