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In the beginning, the joy of the internet was freedom -- freedom to speak, freedom to publish, freedom to communicate. This, along with a "level playing field" (didn't matter if you were black or white, male or female, rich or poor) due to the anonymity the internet provided and the newness of it all (no experts) is what made the internet cool. Then it became cool to be part of a group and we started to "join the club," chatting and hanging out in groups on social media sites where we created online personas....and our groups were private and it was still cool. And if something cooler came along we abandoned everything and moved with our friends to the social media flavor of the year. It was a purley social thing.
Now that businesses have adopted social media as a primary marketing/advertising medium along with print, tv, and radio, is it still cool, and does it matter? Have we invested so much in the current status quo social media tools that we can't easily abandon them for the new cool? Are we trapped even if some of our freedoms are taken away? Do we have to find ways to "bring the cool" to the tools we're stuck with?
For the moment, yes. And bringing the cool is part of connecting with your target and making social media work for your business. It's finding the cool within the uncool. It's finding groups within groups. Since for most social networking it's quantity over quality (how many friends you have is more important than who they are) finding our important connections is like finding a needle in a haystack. We have more possibilities but the task is more difficult.
The task is to find the friends who really count -- potential good connections. This means taking stock of who's connected with you, describing, labeling and sorting; and developing a connection strategy for each group.
What is hip?
"Cool" is different for each of us - how can you be cool to multiple market segments all at once within one social networking group? Or how do you maintain brand integrity when splitting off into more than one group or persona? What content, tone, and interaction is required for each segment?
These are the questions of the day. Who do I connect to and where, how do I craft and deploy targeted messages, and when and how often? If you don't know "what is hip" to each of your target segments you won't be able to make that connection.
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