There are many images of walls in history and they are usually not the best things. When they are destroyed, however, there is celebration and progress. There was President Reagan’s famous call at the Brandenburg Gate of the Berlin Wall “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”. From the pop culture side of things, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” paints a picture of the self-destructive behavior that happens when walls are constructed to keep the outside where it supposedly belongs: outside.
So what’s this have to do with Internet marketing? I contend that it has everything to do with how the industry conducts itself and the damage that it is doing in the process.
For some reason, Internet marketing and the social media industry has decided that staying insular and incestuous with our opinions and information is a good thing. We run around at events and slap each other on the back about how smart we are. We gloat over big numbers of followers and fans but never reveal the dirty little secret that most of the people doing the following are the same ones slapping each other on the back thus the group never really grows other than in ego and self-importance.
What I am trying to say here is that the industry needs a “Take Your Internet Marketer to Work With Their End User” day. I can’t tell you how many times I have shown people, real smart people who are much smarter than me, some of the features that Google has for Google Android devices. Part of me is surprised as I think “I wrote about that at Marketing Pilgrim two months ago and they don’t even know it exists?!” Then I pinch myself and realize that the VAST majority people are not glued to updates about Internet marketing, social media and new tools. Our industry just thinks they are.
For instance, with all of the recognition in social media and search marketing circles that Matt Cutts or Chris Brogan has, how many people outside the industry have a clue who these guys are? Not many. Even more interesting is that they don’t care either. Why is that? They just want the result. They don’t care about the process or even the gadgets or the ‘celebrity’. This is the mass-market person that our little industry ignores on a regular basis and at great risk to the future speed of growth of the industry.
Rather than just rant, here are some suggestions to make this a better industry that reaches more than just the cool kids:
Do real research about real people – Our industry is not unlike others in that we sponsor ‘research’ which is really a PR move dressed up as research. It is usually about some level of usage around search engines or Twitter or Facebook and it’s usually conducted by talking to marketers about their views on marketing. Well, honestly, that doesn’t help much. People trying to use social media for their business need to know about how their customers respond and interact, not their favorite marketers.
Have conferences for end users not industry insiders – Whenever I attend or speak at a conference I am amazed and annoyed at just how Internet marketing industry centric these events can be. Many attendees at major conferences are people who do search and social marketing services for others for a living. Rarely is an audience made up of a majority of people who are from the outside trying to learn more. The recent Local Marketing Expo that I spoke at in Virginia Beach was a nice shift as most attendees were there to learn about how the Internet can impact their business. Of course, we as ‘experts’ rolled them with way too much information that at times was more than I could handle so I can only guess that the SMB seeking knowledge was overwhelmed too.
Stop talking over everyone’s head – We need to stop talking as if everyone understands our language. Most people don’t and they are not real impressed when we make them feel stupid by using buzz words and industry lingo in our conversations. People are hungry to learn about Internet marketing and social media in layman’s terms and our industry as a whole does a bad job of doing just that. We need to slow down and help people where they are and speak to them in real world language. Rather than racing them to the next best thing how about we just help them get a strong basic foundation on the Internet? Or is that beneath us?
Get out of the office and talk to someone not in the industry – When we retweet that great ‘find’ from one of the social media glitterati and think we are helping mankind with passing along this information we are simply yelling into our self-created echo chamber and then thinking and acting like we are accomplishing something. We need to stop talking to each other and instead talk to the people who need help in understanding this stuff in terms they can digest and eventually apply.
What if you didn’t talk to another social media / Internet marketing insider for a week and instead sought out only people who were interested in learning more about these disciplines because it’s not what they do 24/7? Do you think more work would get done and the spread of this great stuff would move more quickly? I think so. Get away from the screen and into the sunlight. Talk to people who are hungry for knowledge at the end user stage. They need help so give it to them.
Stop the social media PDA’s, please! – If we have to suffer through more public displays of sucking up to industry people who are ‘important’ we will suffocate under our own perceived self-importance. There are plenty of people out there with the chops to hang with industry insiders on a skill and knowledge level (and likely even blow their doors off) but they choose to do work for clients instead. While I would love to hear more from them maybe that’s just the point. Do more work and less promotion. We’ll find out about you if you are good because you will have done something and not just said something.
So I ask that we “Tear down this wall” that we have created in this industry. If we stop feeding off of each other and simply get out in the mainstream there will be much greater things ahead. Right now, the Internet marketing and social media industries are experiencing stunted growth due to this insular approach to how we do business. It’s time to expand and move beyond the self-imposed boundaries and really see where this thing can go.
I am sure that many of you reading this are saying “I do that! I am not one of those!”. Good for you. Tell us how you are different in the comments. Tell us what you or your company does to be out amongst the regular folks rather than glad-handing the industry. Maybe it’s just a matter of showing others that it is truly being done that’s needed.
Sure, this is another rant to some degree but I feel better. Too bad no one outside the wall will see it 
.
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