Discovering Web 2-Point-Oh 101 – A Grey-beard’s Adventure in On-line Marketing

The Pwoer of You

So what if you can’t spell? So what if you can’t spin a story like Herman Charles Bosman or rattle out rhymes like Eminem? Social networking and Web 2-point-Oh don’t care about that stuff – what they’re looking for are plain, old fashioned honesty.

What I call the Pwoer of You.

One talent that almost everyone on the net shares with the grand-pappy of good modern writing, Ernest Hemmingway, is an inbuilt bullshit detector. It’s kind-of an open-source software that, for businesses at least, is probably the single most important app for determining whether or not your on-line marketing will work or fail.

Mind you, it’s just as important to be genuine in social situations – because, as they say, what’s in a name? Answer: your personal brand. And you may want to protect THAT at all costs – a dumb action on a social networking site could come back to haunt you when you’re looking for, say, a new job. Or a new wife.

I’ve recently learned that as many as 77% of executive recruiters in (you guessed it) the USA check potential candidates’ profiles on the various social networking sites – and that as many as 35% of those 77% have dropped at least one person because of what they’ve learned there. And who hasn’t heard about the poor unfortunate who got into trouble for telling his boss that he was attending his mother’s funeral all of last week – only to have his boss find a date-imprinted picture on someone else’s profile of him raisin’ hell in Honolulu?

But I didn’t set out today to lecture you on how you should behave on (or off) line. What I really wanted to do was discuss the Pwoer of You.

What makes South Africa authentically South African? SUVs BBQs, goats-head soup, gangsta-rap and wildlife sanctuaries? I don’t think so – more like bakkies, braaivleis, smileys (ew!), kwaito and the Game Reserve.

And that, I think, is the most important lesson I’ve learned about writing: if you try and use big, impressive words, you’ll get caught out. Or you’ll trip over yourself – and then you’ll get caught out AND they’ll laugh at you.

This is important for on-line marketing because of the size of the on-line audience. It goes to that old adage about fooling all of the people all of the time: on line, there are that many people that the wisdom of the crowd (must get that book!) will almost always prevail.

So if you’re a lodge owner who finds his property getting awful reviews on something like TripAdvisor – and you go and get some Pee-Are wallah to spin his spin and, say, make up a glowingly positive review or two to try and balance the books – the bullshit detector’s gonna catch you out.

But if you use the Pwoer of You, you’ll personally go on line and say – “Geez, ou, I’m so sorry about the fleas in your beds. I’ve looked into the problem and we’ve decided not to allow the manager’s dog to sleep in that room any more.”

Now the user will know that you’re genuine – and human (and a dog-lover) – and that will endear you to him and he may (may!) forgive you (that is, of course, if you follow up with the appropriate flea-fighting action and you do everything possible to make the next person’s experience a whole lot pleasanter).

But what you’ve really done is used your own voice to state your own case in your own way.

That’s the Pwoer of You.

In the on-line world, it’s invaluable.

Talk To Me – Martin Hatchuel – martin@barefootclients.co.za – or leave your comments below for everyone to see