Geek Reads, Summer 2007.4: The New Influencers

This article was originally posted on September 24, 2007.

I recently saw Paul Gillin speak at a meeting of the Sales and Marketing roundtable of the Mass Technology Leadership Council, and found some of the ideas covered that day around adding communications channels with our customers via new technologies to be very worthwhile. At this meeting, Paul plugged his book, “The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media,” which I recently read with interest.

While I enjoyed the freshness of the ideas and his obvious mastery of the subject matter, I found some gaps in Gillin’s book around how social media companies like Fark, BoingBoing, Digg, and others are actually making money. Maybe it’s my “upbringing” as a CPA, but when I can’t get my head around how a business model works (i.e., generates profits) and I see investors lining up to throw money at them, I get concerned about a bubble (2001 says “hi.”).

The real usefulness of Gillin’s book to me is as a primer as I seek to understand the best way to direct marketing effort and investment into new social media, such as blogs, podcasts, search engines, tagging, etc. It catalogues tools of the trade and where they might be usefully applied, and I hope to adapt some of the tools and techniques to fit a professional services marketing model, which is far more about conversations than broadcasts.

Originally published at https://mikegil.typepad.com.