For Social Media, Reach is found in the Long Tail!
Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating awareness for leading technology, consumer products, financial services and professional services organizations.
Paul is the global vice president of marketing for Maxymiser a leading web optimization firm, and author of four “Dummies” books: Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley 2009), Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies (Wiley Custom Publishing 2010), Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley 2010) and Facebook Marketing for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley 2011).
His unique approach to marketing has led to recognition of Paul as a BtoB Magazine Top 25 B2B Marketer of the Year for 2010 and 2009 and winner of the DemandGen Award for Utilizing Marketing Automation to Fuel Corporate Growth in 2008. He is also a finalist for the last six years in a row in the Marketing Excellence Awards competition of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), and is a 2010 and 2005 gold award winner in Driving Demand.
Buzz Marketing for Technology, Paul’s blog, has been recognized as a Top 20 Marketing Blog for 2009 and 2008, a Top Blog to Watch for 2009 and 2008, and an Advertising Age Power 150 blog in the “Daily Ranking of Marketing Blogs.”
Paul has shared his marketing thought leadership as a featured speaker for the American Marketing Association, BtoB Magazine, CMO Club, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), and ITSMA. He has appeared on Fox News, and his articles have been featured in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, BtoB Magazine, MarketingProfs and MarketingSherpa.
Paul holds an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Computer Science from Ithaca College.
Hi Paul. Certainly an interesting post. Much of technology’s premise has been built on targeting “early adopters”. What tends to get overlooked is the characteristic behaviors of EAs and the mass are quite different, so what works for one does not necessarily reach into the long tail. I wonder what you think of Seth Godin’s angle – ie stop worrying about finding the influencers – they’re actively out there looking for remarkable ideas to spread?
Paul,
Thanks for expanding on our discussion of the long tail in social media- it’s a subject that fascinates me and that SM2 authority chart is a literal example of how it works. I’d add one thing to reinforce this: reach in social media is exponential and unpredictable. This means a minor league blogger or Twitterer with few followers can break a story and rocket up the tail as that story spreads, something I like to call the brushfire effect. Those who don’t monitor the long tail can miss this kind of thing until it’s too late.
Graham
I think that is right – its more content dependent than person/influencer dependent
If you have a story worth repeating, bloggers, podcasters, etc will repeat your story all over the world!
Hi Paul
Your comment that the impact of your blog is found in the Long Tail (which delivers much of the conversation) is very interesting. I read your blog just after I have finished reading an article “Should You Invest in The Long Tail?” by Prof. Anna Elberse of the Harvard Business School in the HBR of July-August 2008. She found (and I quote from the HBR summary)”Blockbusters are capturing even more of the market than they used to, and consumers don’t really like niche products much.” To quote from the article itself: “People who chose obscure products tend to be familiar with many alternatives; those who know few alternatives tend to stick with popular products.”
Two tongue-in-the-cheek questions: Has your blog reached the status of popular blog (for those who know few alternatives)? Or is it an obscure blog visited by people who tend to be familiar with alternatives but who like visiting your blog?
Seriously, I like visiting your blog for its content. How and why it came to my attention is immaterial. The fact is, I like going back to it time and again. As I have only a limited capacity, measured in time and interests, I tend to every now and then weed out blogs which are not consistently interesting. Yours is consistently interesting. So the message is if a blogger is consistently interesting and produces high-quality content the blogger will be in somebody’s short or long tail – and its best to be in both.
The key is content.
Regards, Albert van Niekerk
[email protected]
Albert
Thanks for the comment and I really like the perspective you added
As far as my blog – well I guess I am in the long tail since it hasnt reached the stature of Mashable or GigaOM or even Scoblizer
But it does have a very loyal following (thank you all of you)
and you are right they come for the content and hopefully some perspective that I bring
Paul
Ran across this post when doing some research on ranking true value of influencers.
This may be the point that others were saying but it seems like your numbers prove the influencers theory. Is it smarter for myself as a social media marketer to try to capture a long tail of those people that follow you individually, or should I just target you and hope that your advocacy to that long tail, that your collecting via your content, comes along with you?
Thanks sorry about run-ons and maybe a repeated idea.
-Samuel
@ Samuel
ok so I agree the numbers prove the point on the influencer theory but in my own personal practice on this blog – I am looking to target the head of the tail keywords. If there is a really relevant keyword like lets say in my case “B2B Professional Services Technology Marketing” which is totally long tail – and I can OWN that baby but there are only 2 people listening (most likely me and my mom 😉 then it makes more sense for me to target (based on google traffic reports) the head of that tail which would be “B2B Marketing”
I hope that helps and thanks for your comment