A few days ago I wrote about a new group I created on the Businessweek Exchange platform called “social media marketing.” I added a lot of great content and promoted it to a few people. Now the group was “pending approval” but I figured there is no way that they can turn down that topic right? Wrong. After spending hours adding content and getting people excited about it “social media marketing” was not approved. Apparently there is already a group called “web 2.0 marketing.” Here is the e-mail I received from Businessweek:
“Dear Jacob Morgan,
Thank you for participating on the Business Exchange.
The topic you suggested, Social Media Marketing, is a great one-in fact, we already have a topic that covers the same information. Since we are trying to cultivate a community around these discussions, we will have to deny your topic. However, we do invite you to visit Web 2.0 Marketing at http://bx.businessweek.com/web-20-marketing/ and share your knowledge.
If you have any questions, please contact me at (email deleted)
Thanks for your help.
Michelle
Michelle Lockett
Senior User Participation Manager
(email deleted)”
I decided to pay a little visit to this “web 2.0 marketing group” here is what I found:
If you can read that it basically states that web 2.0 marketing is a type of online marketing that uses trends in social media…huh?
Next I decided to take a look at some of the content that was presented:
None of these submitted articles have anything to do with social media let alone web 2.0 marketing. What sort of value is a user searching for “web 2.0 marketing” supposed to get out of this?
Let’s take a look at what I wanted to populate “social media marketing” with:
Now you tell me, what is more valuable for web 2.0 marketing or social media marketing? As a user trying to find out about how to use “social media trends” what would you prefer to see?
Going beyond the content for a moment let’s also look at the term web 2.0 marketing. First of all does anyone even use that term? What the heck does “web 2.0 marketing” mean?
One of my readers, Ari Herzog, wrote a great post on why versioning the web is silly, maybe business week should read it?
Instead of allowing the group “social media marketing” to exist it was deleted and replaced by a 404 error page…genius! Now, instead of capturing the users that may visit the site they will just be pointed to an “error” page.
Not only that but users that visit the platform are much more likely to search for “social media marketing” instead of “web 2.0 marketing.” Social media marketing means something, it means using the social media tactics, tools, and strategies out there to build relationships with your users. Web 2.0 marketing means…who knows. Might as well have called the group web 3.0 marketing. People understand what social media means but many people have no clue what web 2.0 means. When I say facebook or twitter, do you think social media or web 2.0?
I think businessweek made a real bonehead move by not allowing the creation of a “social media marketing” group. I mean the whole businessexchange platform is a “social media” platform not a “web 2.0” platform. Sure I understand it’s great to eliminate clutter, but take a look at the content in each of the groups, do they even remotely overlap? No.
Sorry BusinessWeek but what you did, was (for lack of a better word) stupid and I hope you guys change your mind and allow the creation of the “social media marketing” group as so many have requested. Of course, I could go on and on about the other issues and problems with the decision you guys took, but I think I have made my point.
I didn’t write this to bash you or insult you but to help you. I like the new platform you guys created and I want to see it succeed (in fact I may even be willing to help).
Here are just a few of the responses I received on twitter when I told over 860 people that you just canceled the “social media marketing” group.
This is a great discussion! Thank you Jason!
I agree, that “Social Media” is much more descriptive and has a larger audience than just Web 2.0, which many already consider to be 'old' the term is around since 1999 actually. Web 2.0 is also more about the tools, the technology, Social Media captures much more succinct the community of people interacting. It's about people of an organization or company interacting with people.
The BusinessWeek community is so young that early discouraging action will hinder its growth. Would BusinessWeek take is seriously, than it would allow for the community to decide, which of the groups will attract more discussion and better content. Let the community be the judge.
Approval should be only necessary to prevent promotional groups of single advertisers or illegal activity. With approval of content or semantics BusinessWeek assumes it already knows what people want and thinks it can channel communication. Welcome to the Social Media World BusinessWeek. It's not about you, it's about the members of your community.
There was a very intereting article in the last Wired about a Moms Online Community, where similar yeah call it b”oneheadedness” resulted that the community members voted with their feet so to speak and moved to a news online group that actually catereed to the need of the original group.
BusinessWeek needs to understand if you want to form communities around your entities, it's the community that matters…
Let this be all I say for today. Again Thank you Jason for being so vocal.
Sorry, of course it's Jacob. I apologize!
Jacob,
First off, let me just say how cool it is that you really did take the time write a very intelligent and obviously most needed post. People need to be educated on this.
Who knows if Busniess Week will change there minds but I think even if they get a glimpse of this post, i think they'll realize what they thought they understood was wrong. As you mentioned, it's in no way of bashing them, but this was necessary.
How many times have heard someone try to look smart and use a word that obviously isn't in their vocabulary. You feel bad for them so you feel a responsibility to make them understand how to use that word. This may be an awful analogy but this is exactly what's happening.
Anyone involved with any type of online marketing understands what a “niche” is right. Social Media is obviously not some small niche but you get what I'm saying right? It should part of every companies marketing strategy. Period.
You mentioned “Sure I understand it’s great to eliminate clutter, but take a look at the content in each of the groups, do they even remotely overlap? No.” You're absolutely right about the content being completely different. But, this is in no way clutter on their site.
Social Media, SEO, Paid Search are types of marketing yes, but they've outgrown themselves so much, that it's become a necessity to place them in their own categories.
In my mind, Business Week should have Web 2.0 Marketing or just Internet Marketing and below should fall the different marketing strategies. SMO, SEO, PPC, etc.
Jacob, thanks for taking the time to write this post. I think you did a great job. I think you should gather all of theses comments and shoot another email off to Michelle at Business Week and educate her.
By the way, thanks for including my response on Twitter 🙂 Just another example of Social Media right?
Well done post man.
JR Farr
I disagree, JR, that Business Week should have segmented marketing channels. Sure, marketing is part of business but BW traditionally focuses on upper management and supply chain/logistics issues and less on marketing/communications.
Would a typical BW reader understand the difference between SMO, SEO, PPC, and other acronyms without writing them out and defining the differences? Or is such an acronym soup better suited for an audience that understands the difference between Web 2.0 and Social Media?
Perhaps businesses are floating Web 2.0 more than social media for the very reason that executives dislike media. Perhaps, as Peter Kim, David Alston, Rick Mahn and others mention, the better term is social web.
Suggest BW change its focus from Web 2.0 to social web. Social web marketing, if you will.
Hi Birgit,
eh jason jacob, they both start with a J 🙂 good thing is that businessweek actually approved the community now! take a look at today's post, it's quite an interesting turn of events. bweek does understand that it's the community that matters, or so i hope.
thanks for reading and commenting!
close enough!
hey JF,
glad you found the post interesting. as i mentioned above birgit, bweek decided to allow the group to continue and in fact received a message from the editor-in-chief at bweek himself. they handed the situation quite well, check out todays post.
i think their new platform has a lot of potential. it will grow but the trouble with trying to select very niche topics is that not all the users know they exist. better to start with broader topics and then perhaps provide recommendations to more detailed narrowed areas.
thanks for reading and commenting JR!
hey JR,
glad you found the post interesting. as i mentioned above birgit, bweek decided to allow the group to continue and in fact received a message from the editor-in-chief at bweek himself. they handed the situation quite well, check out todays post.
i think their new platform has a lot of potential. it will grow but the trouble with trying to select very niche topics is that not all the users know they exist. better to start with broader topics and then perhaps provide recommendations to more detailed narrowed areas.
thanks for reading and commenting JR!
hey JR,
glad you found the post interesting. as i mentioned above birgit, bweek decided to allow the group to continue and in fact received a message from the editor-in-chief at bweek himself. they handed the situation quite well, check out todays post.
i think their new platform has a lot of potential. it will grow but the trouble with trying to select very niche topics is that not all the users know they exist. better to start with broader topics and then perhaps provide recommendations to more detailed narrowed areas.
thanks for reading and commenting JR!
hey ari, that was also the point i was trying to make. a lot of the users are not familiar with terms like SEO, web 2.0, etc. so trying to create a categories that are too niche may not be the best idea…yet.
users are likely to search for “social media marketing” then web 2.0 marketing so it seemed silly that they wanted to exclude it. read today's post though, they agreed to let the group exist 🙂
thanks for reading and commenting!
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I sense your frustration in this post–frustration borne not only out of your work product suddenly arbitrarily going “poof!” but also your personal passion for logical categorization of content vs. illogical (and likely less usable) content. You, simply put, could not figure out why BW didn't “get it.” How authentic are their endeavors if they didn't appreciate the direction of a significant contributor? Weren't they looking for your expertise?
I've also read your follow-up post, the one where you graciously share BW's corrective reaching-out words. I think it's good of you to give them their moment to reconcile (redeem?) themselves with your readers. I hope things work out famously.
If I could offer one observation, it would be that maybe the inclusion of the Senior User Participation Manager's name wasn't necessary–it didn't lend anything to the story (john doe would have been a fine substitute). We don't know the circumstances with which she made her determinations. And she doesn't really get an opportunity to voice her position; to do so could be counter to how things have since been smoothed out.
Just a thought. Thanks for telling your story.
hi heather thanks for the comment.
i included names so that the people i interacted with received credit for what they did. the article was shared internally and i wanted members of the team to know exactly who was involved. she is more then welcome to voice her position, that's the beauty of a blog, twitter, comments, etc.
i'm also glad things have since been smoothed out, they made a smart decision. thanks for reading and commenting heather.
Interesting post. I have stumbled and twittered this for my friends. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.
Interesting post. I have stumbled and twittered this for my friends. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.