When advertisers run an ad campaign on television, they may get 30 seconds or so to get a viewer’s attention. It’s a form of one-way interaction (since a person cannot interact with a television) and it’s an interruption that most people choose to ignore.  When  you turn it around and start comparing advertising on the Web, it’s slightly different.

A Few Notes About Interruptive Advertising:

When you’re watching television, you are typically watching it to relax and be entertained.  When you are using the computer, you are typically using it to relax, be entertained, communicate with others and quite possibly gain knowledge.  Therefore, when you throw advertising in in the form of commercials, pop-up ads, or banners, it’s an interruption- an annoyance.  However, most people accept television commercials the same way that Internet users accept banner ads and pop ups: they are a tradeoff and something that can be ignored.

Evans cites Myspace as an example stating that most people know and understand that the reason Myspace is a free service is due to the presence of advertising….EVERYWHERE.  The reason that the majority of social networks online (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) are free is due to the presence of ads, so I guess the ad people must be doing pretty well.  However, if you’re anything like me, you never click on the PPC ads on the sidebar which begs the question that Evans brings up:  If you knew that no one was watching, would you still pay for the ad?

On the Internet, the only real way that your advertising message receives any attention is if people are interested to begin with.  If you depend on iterruptive advertising to earn revenue, then you might as well pack up your bags now.  This is why so many ad campaigns have turned towards social networks and microblogging services such as Twitter.  The thinking is that if you generate enough of a buzz about your product/service to a targeted audience, then eventually you will succeed in having people purchase that product/service.

Participation is Everything

On the Internet, the social media element demands your full attention and presence.  According to Evans:

On the Social Web, if your profile isn’t up-to-date, if you’re not commenting, if you’re not making connections, you don’t exist.

The Main Points According to Dave Evans

• Social networks lend themselves to direct participation.
• Participation and transparency are central to success on the Social Web.
• You can tap existing social marketing applications that operate within leading networks.
• You can use white-label platforms to implement your own community and support services.

From a marketing standpoint, advertising is as natural as putting your pants on in the morning; you don’t even think twice about it.  However, to other people (the consumers), advertising is one of the most annoying things.  It’s an intrusion on our privacy and an unwelcome interruption.  That being said, Evans poses the question: If you couldn’t interrupt people, how would you reach them?

Marketing is tricky.  On the one hand, as a marketer, you want to create a buzz about your product or service with the hopes that it will lead to an increased revenue.  At the same time though, you don’t want to turn possible consumers off by aggravating them.  This is where online marketing comes into play.  Many more businesses are turning to online marketing and advertising because let’s face it; this is where most people spend the majority of their time.  Additionally, studies have proven online marketing to be more cost effective overall than other traditional means of advertising (i.e. television, radio, newsprint).

Building Your Online Reputation

Even if you were at the top of your game and widely recognized as a leader in traditional forms of marketing, switching over to online marketing means having to start from scratch; it means that you have to work on building your reputation all over again because ultimately, it’s your online (not your offline) reputation that drives your desired results on the Social Web.  So how do you go about building your reputation online?  You begin with a quantitative break down how popular you are in some of the following categories:

• ratio of blog comments to your blog post
• unique visitors
• dwell times (how long any one person stayed on your site)
• assessing social commentary about the content on your site (do people like it or hate it?)
• assessing the social commentary related to your product or service (is your website helping or hindering this?)

Other questions that you’ll also want to be thinking about:

• What are you doing to generate awareness about your product, brand or service?
• What channel  is your top performer in terms of return on investment (ROI)? How was it measured?
• Are your strongest touchpoint experiences driven by marketing (the expectation you set) or operations (the product or service you deliver)?

By continuously reviewing and tuning your content based on its use, you are continuously enhancing your relevance to specific audiences and thereby building your social reputation. -Dave Evans

The Main Points According to Dave Evans:

• Social media is most different from traditional media in that it lacks the option to force an interruption:  Your message has to be invited in.
• Social media is fundamentally measurable.
• Social media can be organized as follows:
• Platforms: This includes social networks along with white-label community and forum applications.
• Content: This includes ratings, reviews, photos, videos, podcasts, and similar content that is created and shared on the Social Web.
• Interactions: This includes the little bits of information that flow around through feeds, email, and SMS that tell participants what is going on across the Social Web.

As most of us recognize by now, the Social Web can be extremely beneficial to business owners who have a loyal customer base.  In this chapter, Dave Evans talks about the importance of being able to measure how influential your brand is to your customers.  By understanding how willing your customers are to evangelize or spread the good word about your brand, you can begin to evaluate how successful your business will be in the future.

Additionally, Evans notes that any profits that a business earns through any form of coercion, trickery, or misleading advice are at best short term and will-if left unchecked- ultimately destroy the business.   At the heart of everything is the customer.  The role of the customer recommendation is central to the rise or fall of your brand. Evans goes on to point out the following:

On the Social Web- made up of social media applications such as blogs, photo and video sharing, collaborative event planning tools, ratings and reviews, and more- the conversations that stem from actual, delightful experiences with products and services are the key to driving and sustaining evangelism and hence long-term growth.

One of the main things to remember about influence and measurement regarding your business and the Social Web is that you want to increase the number of people who are willing to promote your brand while decreasing the number of people who detract from your business model.  Provide a great experience, and the conversation will take care of itself.

The Main Points According to Dave

• The measurement of influence is critical to successfully implementing social media.  The Net Promoter score works very well for capturing and tracking this.
• Influence- rather than control- is the central element you have at your disposal on the Social Web.
• Taking the time to gather and distill quantitative metrics is essential: Speak with IT, your webmaster, media group, and your CFO to develop a comprehensive dashboard and report card that includes potential social measures.
• Integrate blog indexing services and any relevant online data that you have access to into your measurement platform.