Being popular does not make something right. Online marketing tries to create swells in popular culture, but such popularity is seldom independent or accidental. Beware the vested interests that could be presenting you with seemingly popular results.
Increasingly, general search engines sites such as Google and Bing, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and media search and storage sites like YouTube are telling us what is popular, and encouraging us to view what is popular.
The more that people are encouraged to view a popular target, the more they are likely to do so, and thus the popularity of the target increases, in a self-fulfilling positive feedback loop.
Whilst it may seem helpful to have search engines suggest web pages, websites, videos etc to us, the basis of how the suggestion is being made needs to be understood, questioned and even challenged.
Beware the Vested Interests
What vested interests are at work in making these suggestions? You may never see or even realize that something is being pushed onto you, but pushed it is, and often in subliminal ways of which you are unaware.
If something is popular with one group of people or even a mass of people online, it does not mean it will be popular for you or the groups to which you may belong. Just because something is popular does not make it right or good’ Often popularity does not even make something worthwhile to be viewed; it may just be sensationalized, over-hyped, biased or attention-seeking.
Watch out for Pre-Launch Buzz
It may be part of someone’s deliberate strategy to generate the online hype. Online product launches have become a marketing science in themselves, with an important element being the creation of the ‘pre-launch buzz’ throughout the target communities.
If you are in a community and receive messages about an up-coming product launch from enough people, you are likely to pay attention. It’s not easy to know whether the new product is as great as everyone is saying until you try it, or until you read honest reviews from people you trust.
Initial product reviews may be biased and self-serving comments from affiliate marketers looking to receive a sales commission from product sales they generate.
Many people with vested interests working together online help to create online buzz. The buzz can be made to look and feel exciting, valuable and worthwhile to you, and you need to question if you are being remotely managed as part of the herd or if you are making a rational and independent critical purchasing decision.
Worse, we may be guided or seduced into following the herd and enhancing the popularity of something that could be unhelpful to us, sinister or even harmful.
Creating Popularity is now a Marketing Task
Creating product popularity has always been a marketing and advertising task, but now the tools have changed.
Specific tools and techniques are available to create online popularity, or at least the appearance of popularity.
As something online appears to become more popular, a cultural swell occurs which continues to grow through the positive feedback loop, attracting more of a mass audience.
Part of the marketing challenge is that the audience is not necessarily captive and looking for what you have to offer. You have to find them, or more likely in the online world, they have to find you.
The audience may be open and receptive to what you are offering or promoting, but you also need them to react and respond favorably to you.
Having your video clip go viral on Facebook may need the recommendations of hundreds or thousands of people, or just one person in charge of a large Facebook group.
Your video could be given a listing in YouTube’s top ten, with subsequent exposure to an audience of millions.
Something being recommended on the basis of its popularity may appear to be helpful to you, but remember, it’s a commercial world and ultimately, money talks. The questions are, who is paying, and who listens?
Questions To Ponder
- How do you fit in to the ‘Popular’ world? Is your business ‘popular’?
- What are your prospective customers typically looking for when they search online for a supplier such as you? If they look for you, do they find you or do they find what is ‘popular’?
- If you are launching a product online, you may want to create the buzz. Do you know how to?
- If you are a user or customer online, how do you recognize the buzz and learn not to be sucked in by it?
Go to next trend: Increasing Importance of Trusted Brands
Go to previous trend: Increasing Availability of Low Cost Software & Data Storage Solutions
Related Posts: