New Marketing via Social Software

As any business person knows, connecting your offerings with buyers/customers - marketing - is how you stay in business. Seth Godin writes in a post, Bureaucracy = Death...

Seth...I don't care if you're in radio, packaged goods, organized religion or an online merchant. If you're not saying yes to change, you're slowly losing whatever race you happen to be in.

The traditional route of marketing (see left hand column of Kathy's chart) does not work anymore. The biggest retailer on the net is moving to social software. What's your plan?

You ARE a marketer. Deal with it. Kathy Sierra, Headrush...

In this new open-source/cluetrain world, I am a marketer. And so are you. If you're interested in creating passionate users, or keeping your job, or breathing life into a startup, or getting others to contribute to your open source project, or getting your significant other to agree to the vacation you want to go on... congratulations. You're in marketing. Now go kill yourself.

Modern marketing is not rocket science.

The key is finding/discovering the conversation(s) and building on them. If you haven't read "The Tipping Point", Malcolm Gladwell, here's a primer. Every business has keywords and memes that we use to describe what the biz is about. Start searching technorati, icerocket, blogpulse, etc. to find out what's being said about your industry, business, or you.