Out-Smarts Marketing Services

Marc Canter former rock and opera singer now focuses on social technologies.  He says he’s visionary and has an uncanny ability to correctly predict the future - time will tell.   His main point is that all software needs to become social.  We need to be taking advantage of the social and open nature of technology now to extend beyond traditional realms of software.

He works with Bell Canada to create a site that takes advantage of social sharing to promote Bell’s music and movies.  He predicts Bell Canada will be an openID broker.There’s no real compelling reason to do this right now but it will be way of future.

I haven’t captured half of what Marc said so you should check out his aforementioned blog and his PeopleAggregator company.

Nice job Marc!

1. Use Twitter to market to you audience (assuming your audience are Twits that is (or should that be Tweets?). It can be used for branding and networking effectively. Dosh dosh lists 17 more Twitter marketing applications and innovative Tweet uses.

2. Participate in the blogosphere. Find blogs pertaining to your industry or your target audience and get commenting. You would be amazed at how this can help spread the word.

3. Find out about new technologies that make it easier for people to do business with you - like Skype - the on-line phone service or that help you present your offering more effectively - like Flickr the photo site -  and make full use of them on your website.

4. Get creative with video clips about your company: make them quirky, funny or alternative and post on YouTube. You never know, this could be the next big meme.

5. If your not comfortable with writing blog comments or posts or are camera shy, why not consider a Podcasting your message. Its much easier than you think.

6. When you find interesting articles, pages or clips, share them with your others in your field. I Stumble but hear that Magnolia and Deli.cio.us are great for this too.

7. Join Facebook, MySpace or Linked In (or all three) and get networking. You know the old adage about a friend of a friend being your friend too: its so much easier to do business with people you’ve been referred to by a friend or colleague.

8. Use Internet advertising technologies such as AdWords or Facebook Social to reach and promote to the right audience.

9. Forums or chat rooms where your audience collaborate are great ways to get involved, join the conversation and establish expertise with a wider audience.

10. Get wiki with it. Join Wikipedia and share your knowledge (but be careful not to be blatantly corporate or your posts will just get deleted) with the global audience.

Thinking of using wikis to effectively collaborate and increase productivity? There’s a great article in e-week’s insight section giving 25 valuable tips that you should consider when deploying wikis in your organization. These include: making it easy for users to use and to personalize; setting the ground rules early to ensure users know how to participate; rewarding frequent use and activity.

If you are wondering about wikis: what they are and how you can use them to your benefit, you should check out this great video from WetPaint which explains all you need to know about this collaborative Internet technology in a short and entertaining video.