commbasics

The customer/client is no more. He is now your partner and you are his. Your mutual success is intertwined. Spent a few days away... thinking.  Lots of stuff needs to be sorted out and I'm getting there.  Much of it has been inspired by Seth Godin's book Tribes , which has been incredibly encouraging personally and I highly recommend it.  But another large chunk came out of a story that Craig Ferguson  told about buying a rug in Turkey. He said he found this rug in a shop, liked it and asked how much it was.  The shop owner quoted a price and Craig reached for his wallet.  The shop owner said, "Let's have a cup of tea first."  They sat, drank tea, chatted, and then dickered on the price of the rug.  An agreeable price was set and Ferguson walked out with the rug at a price less then was originally quoted.  It's the way things are done there. What was not talked about was the reason it was done. ...

I was kinda surprised at how little comment and conversation has been going on over the news that Facebook has overtaken Google News as the source of website referrals on the net.  This is a pretty earthshaking development in the realm of corporate communications. Companies, especially niche technology companies, have relied heavily on Google to disseminate news releases to the customer base on the net.  This has been the primary reason for cutting advertising and PR budgets.  After all, why spend money to get attention when it is virtually free on the 'net? But as I, and so many others, have predicted, the decimation of the news media that provided third party verification of corporate messages, has forced the consuming public to rely on a new, even more uncontrollable third party verifier... their friends and colleagues. The way it works is people see a news release or or other corporate marketing crap on Google and instead of clicking on the link to the company...