Michael Port, Leesa Barnes on Social Media and Marketing

My chums – Michael says:

Leesa Barnes of Podonomics.com.com wrote a blog post called Michael Port & the Power of Social Media. It got me thinking.
I once heard someone say that there are three ways to create awareness for what you do:

You can talk about what you do;

You can write about what you do; or

You can get other people to talk and write about you.

I think Michael has the key with do they like you. In a world of too many choices and mass media and mass automation (ref Dan Pink and Tofflers), being likable can be a competitive difference. And it isn’t pleasing everybody all the time.
#3 can also be framed as: “Impress the extroverts.” It’s worked for me. 🙂

Posted

November 9, 2006

General

Andy Wibbels

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3 responses to “Michael Port, Leesa Barnes on Social Media and Marketing”

Leesa Barnes

November 10, 2006

Likeability as a competitive advantage? I love it. And yes, Andy, I like you.

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Havi Brooks

November 24, 2006

I agree that being (or projecting) likeable, a variation on accessible, is good business sense. At the same time “likeable” means allowing people to like you or even helping them like you without actually telling them that you are “likeable”. What Steve Krug from sensible.com calls being a mensch on your site.
As Steve says, visitors are keeping mental score and anything that wastes their time, confuses or doesn’t help is (consciously or unconsciously) removing mensch-points.
So: a reader goes to Michael Port’s blog and finds a post about why he is likeable which then directs the reader to Leesa Barnes blog where she in turn posts about Michael Port being likeable. At this point Michael’s site already becomes a little bit less likable by virtue of having taken the reader’s time without having given information (other than the original instruction to act in a “likeable” manner).
It would seem that the best way to be likeable, or to do these mensch-like things on your site, is to share information rather than horn-tooting. Celebrating someone else’s celebrating of your being likeable could easily be misconstrued as manipulative rather than helpful.
Important as it is to impress the extroverts (great phrase!), it never pays to forget about the clicking power of the introverts.
Thanks for being easy to like. But even better and more important: thanks for not hitting me over the head with it!

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Andrea >> Become a Consultant

April 23, 2007

That’s long been a key goal in sales, so it’s not surprising to see the same idea in branding.

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Michael Port, Leesa Barnes on Social Media and Marketing

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3 responses to “Michael Port, Leesa Barnes on Social Media and Marketing”

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