We're Just Getting Started… And You Should Too

A couple of days ago, I asked this question: Are You Excited To Be Here? While the question was more geared towards your motivation to serve the Marketing industry, it is directly tied into the thoughts in this Blog posting. I just completed a six hour-plus drive from Montreal to upstate New York, and in between futzing around with the Garmin GPS system and playing air guitar to Sirius satellite radio, I started reflecting on how much Podcasting, Blogs and even the newer stuff like Twitter, Second Life and Facebook seem to have hit a rut for those taking part (sort of like what Seth Godin talks about in The Dip), but unlike The Dip I don’t think that it’s about pushing through or stopping.

I think there’s something bigger to contemplate here: we’re just getting started. We haven’t even really hit mile number one yet. To quit Blogging for Micro-Blogging, to leave a virtual world to set up an online social network, are all actions of the early adopter. We’ve talked about the "shiny object syndrome" here on a multiple of occasions, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing (how can I? I’m just as guilty as the next shiny object lover). I can’t even remember the last time I Blogged about Second Life (that’s like so ten days ago), and I don’t find myself mentioning MySpace even close to the same amount of times as I mention Facebook.

For the most part, the majority of people who abandon a channel to find something new probably discover pretty quickly that while it was fun to set-up the account, make everything look good, add some content and connect to like-minded people, the net result is a lot of work and maintenance. From a Marketing perspective the point is not to do things based off of how "new" the channel is, or how cool you think your brand will look in it. The challenge is to understand that no matter which new media channel you choose, including Blogging (which has been around for close to a decade now), it’s all still relatively new and undefined (let’s not even talk about the ROI here).

For all of the fanfare we read about Twitter and FriendFeed today, I believe there to still be an equal amount of energetic people still interested in the Twitter and FriendFeed of last year (or five years ago), and I also have an inkling that all of these new Digital Marketing opportunities are still undefined because we are just getting started here.

That all being said, as a Marketer thinking about the week ahead and how you’re going to make it count more than the one that just passed, maybe this coming Monday should be the one where you get started trying it out and helping us all define it too.