Spotlight on NZ

Mixed media

Frances Manwaring | 23 June 2009 | 0 Comments

The word layering is bandied about a lot these days.  Back in the day, layering was what you did with clothes.  Nowadays, it's more likely to be how you approach marketing.  Contemporary marketing is all about harnessing a richly layered combination of new and conventional channels including the proliferation of social media channels. I was a bit of a sceptic about these until recently.  The whole concept of social media playing any role in the business of serious communications was something of an anathema.  However, I'm happy to say in the liight of mounting proof of what can be achieved, I've seen the light! 

Take yesterday.  A colleague and I had travelled to Auckland for a couple of key meetings.  Ignoring for a moment the contradcition of those words 'we travelled,' our business being premised on the concept of 'going virtual' and all - the interesting point was that two of our Auckland meetings were Twitter contacts.  These were people we would never in a million years have encountered otherwise, but who ould turn out to be important partners.  It's astonishing how much additional reach Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook et al provide and the randomness of how the connections are made.  It's mind-boggling really.   Another example.   M-C tweeted the last media release we put out and within about a nanosecond of someone re-tweeting, it had been picked up be a couple of media sites, including GeekZone NZ, resulting in an instant flood of visitors to our demo site.  The conventional releases did achieve results, but only several days later. 

Through social media channels, it's possible to cast your net wide and connect with people that would have previously been off limits.  For events like ExpoNZ showcasing a relatively small country on the edge of the world, on the one hand social media marketing offers extended reach beyond most people's wildest dreams even a decade ago.  On the other hand, they allow the possibilitiy of pin-point targetting that must be the envy of magazine publishers and television advertising executives.  The caveat?  It's a time consuming business and you really have to stick at it and really work at understanding how to cut through all the trivia and inconsequentialities so that you can harness the power of the medium to serve the busienss objectives. At least that's what my clever colleagues who do the lion's share for our organisation tell me...

Tags: Travel, virtual technology, New Zealand, meetings, marketing, social media marketing, networking