Drawing attention to its rapid growth, the professional networking site LinkedIn was recently valued at $1 billion.  Its unique traffic increased 361% over the past year.  Although its 9,000 curious visitors don’t near myspace’s numbers, it may not be fair to compare the online community with its entertainment-based counterparts.  In fact, the key to understanding this 10-figure estimate lies in looking at LinkedIn outside the “social networking” and online “personal branding” buzz.

 

If LinkedIn’s goals were to generate the frequency of Scrabulous-fabulous Facebook or Myspace, its objectives would be fundamentally misaligned.  The working professional cares more about securing accounts than updating minor details on “My Account.”  The acceptable professional platform of identity is based on a much narrower spectrum than that of the student.  The 40+, $100K+ executives of LinkedIn’s demographic aren’t trying to reinvent their image by posting a resume.

 

The catch with meaningful online social networks is that they underscore real life relationships.  There is a good chance that your contacts online are contacts you meet in life, and a better chance that you’ll take a recommendation from someone who shook your hand than someone whose name just popped up on your monitor.  Moreover, the main attributes of LinkedIn- resume searching, instant messaging, and industry chatter- are all quite established in other mediums: Monster, Blackberry, RSS Feeds and…wait, what about industry chatter?

 

And that’s where LinkedIn may shine.  LinkedIn has the power to interactively centralize key industry players.  It challenge is to become a tool of substance, a user-driven resource of information based on the confidence already established in real-life relationships and the impulse to measure decisions by others’ opinions.  While users will have to pay careful attention to their NDAs, the opportunity to reach all contacts at once with open inquiries may transcend the current scan-and-delete trap of mass emails.  LinkedIn’s attractiveness is more than just another medium for instant communication.  It’s an efficient and professional way to capitalize on the experts often receiving the greatest priority…the colleagues you already trust.

 

I’m currently 54 pages deep into Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point.  Per the copyright, Gladwell’s theories of epidemics, the power of word-of-mouth messaging and logistics of influence have been around since 2000.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, this book looks at “how little things can make a big difference” – from Paul Revere’s famous horse ride through Boston, to the spread of infectious diseases, to the popularity of Hush Puppies footwear in the 1990s.

 

Gladwell administers a test in the book to determine whether or not a person can be deemed a ’Connector’ in this world.  Someone, who through life, travels in multiple social and career circles and serves as the link between people who might otherwise never meet.  The name of the game is to give yourself a point (or multiple points for numerous acquaintances) for each person you know with a last name from a random phonebook list.

 

As one who aspires to be a master communicator, I read this and was immediately hopeful.  Given my profession and in light of other self-proclaimed, people-linking talents I was sure I would have the phonebook ‘memorized,’ so to speak.

 

Eh – I scored a 29; this puts me somewhere between the average college student (score 21) and a group of highly educated 40-50 year old Ph.D.s from Jersey (score 39.)   My hope is to bump up my score over time.  Are you one of society’s ‘Connectors?’  Take the test.  Gladwell’s the most connected survey taker scored an impressive 108.

 

Advertising, marketing and public relations have been around since the beginning of time.  Long before the age of radio and television, people relied on the word of others for their information, especially regarding businesses and products.  The more people that liked a business or product, the more people would talk and the more people would use them.   

 

Merchants traveled from locale to locale to sell their wares and services.  Then, handbills and flyers were the announcements of the day with word of mouth being the advertising mechanism.  Eventually, “modern” communications came into being; the printing press, telephone, telegraph, radio and television.  Now businesses had more ways to get the word out to far more people about their organization, their products, and their services.  Advertising agencies popped up with creative ways to promote the business and/or products on the television.  Their sole purpose was to create ads that would capture the viewers/readers attention and direct their purchase of a product or service.  Hundreds of thousands of people could be reached easily through print ads, radio spots and television commercials.  This ‘new’ fangled technology also made it easier for organizations to get the word out about who they were and what they did. 

 

Years later with the advent of personal computers and the worldwide web, the ability to connect with others worldwide instantaneously, word of mouth suddenly took on a whole new meaning.  Social networking, discussion forums, personal journaling sites cropped up and people could instantly connect with others around the globe.

 

Wikipedia defines “Blog” as: “A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.”  

 

People now use blogging for everything.  The average person can put his passions, opinions, thoughts into his blog and post it for the world to see, and comment on. 

 

New York magazine printed an article in February of 2006, just a list actually (called The Early Years) that is a timeline on the History of Blogging.   People started using their blogs to discuss anything and everything.  That includes their personal experiences with products and companies, books and movies, politics, religion, child raising issues, medical issues, etc.  You name it someone is probably blogging about it.   Terms like Citizen Marketers and Citizen Journalists have been attached to bloggers now. 

 

What does all that have to do with business, advertising, public relations, and marketing you ask?  It has everything to do with it.  It’s called communications.  Consumers of all products and services are not afraid to post their experiences with a business online for the world to see.  Businesses have more reason now to worry about “word of mouth” recommendations than ever before.  Within minutes client/customer opinions of your services or product can be seen worldwide, before an organization can even react to it.

 

In their book Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message the authors show the role that blogging is now playing in the business world.  People aren’t afraid to take their satisfaction or dissatisfaction of/with any organization, product, location or service to the entire world.  A good example is this blog I found, The Viral Garden, giving a critique of this very book.   

 

In this book there is mention of someone who had a bad experience with the tech support for Dell computers.  Googling Dell Hell produces 311,000 results, many of which are personal blogs.  Entering any product name with the word “sucks” (the average person’s definition of dissatisfaction) into a search engine, produces some interesting results.  For example “Hershey’s sucks” produced a list of 56,600 results; Nabisco sucks comes up with 21,700 results; Ads suck produces a whopping 257,000 results.  Googling “product endorsement blogs” brought up 235,000 results.

 

It is all the more important today for businesses of all kinds, to pay attention to their clients and customers.  One disgruntled client/customer can create a blog and reach millions in short order.  BusinessWeek magazine ran an insightful article recently on the importance of paying attention to all these unhappy clients/customers “Love the customers who hate you.”  More importantly they show why turning that dissatisfied customer into a satisfied one is some of the best free PR a business can get: “You should require everyone in your C-suite to read the missives of unhappy customers who rise up in Google — and to fix every problem they can. It’s O.K. to ignore the people who hate you for sport or seem to be operating out of a need for attention. But don’t make the mistake of dismissing the rest. Learn from them and you’ll earn many dividends. You’ll satisfy dissatisfied customers. These customers may turn around and tell their online friends that you don’t suck after all. That’s free PR that can save you lost sales or even earn you new ones. You will learn about your products and their problems and how to make them better — without the expense of focus groups.”

 

Dell created a “Dell Community” on their website that offers blogs, forums, ideas, and videos.  They even have a ‘community suggestion box’ for customers to send their ideas, as well as a ‘member spotlight’ where they recognize some of their most active contributing community members.  By interacting with their customer base, by listening to them and actually considering some of their suggestions, Dell is able to satisfy more of its customers who probably then turn around and talk about how great Dell products and support are. 

 

Even YouTube is being used for advertising, branding, and by those more comfortable in front of a camera than at a keyboard.  Googling “public relations on YouTube” produces 2,410,000 results.  Someone else was apparently curious about PR on YouTube and found 102 YouTube videos tagged “public relations” back in September of 2006.  In May of 2008 I found 70,600 videos tagged “public relations”. 

 

It is safe to say that the computer age is definitely changing the way people shop, buy, judge products and services, as well as interacting with each other and businesses.  With information so readily available to the average person, people in marketing, advertising, public relations have to work harder to get their word out, because the general public is playing an even bigger role in shaping how businesses operate.  Word of mouth has taken on a new meaning now and can spread faster than you can say “may I help you?”