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Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message
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Sales rank 367,999
Customers rating (based on 26 reviews)
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""A solid... insightful explanation of how the Internet has armed the consumer—which is to say, everyone—against the mindless blather of corporate messaging attempts. Drop everything and read this book.""—The Wall Street Journal  The woman next to you in the coffee shop, typing madly on her laptop, just might be determining the ending to next year's block-buster film or how quickly the hottest new PDAT hits store shelves. In homes, dorm rooms, waiting rooms, planes and trains around the world, millions of people are exercising enormous influence on what we buy, even though they have no official connection to those products and services.  Who are they? What motivates them? Marketing experts Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba explore the ramifications of social media in Citizen Marketers. As everyday people increasingly create content on behalf of companies, brands or products, they are collaborating with others just like themselves and forming ever-growing communities of enhusiasts and evangelists. From the rough to the sophisticated, the ""user-generated media"" of blogs, online bulletin boards, podcasts, photos, songs, and animations are influencing companies' customer relationships, product design, and marketing campaigns, whether they participate willingly or not.  Citizen Marketers is the first book to document this phenomenon, examining some of the early winners and losers in this new genre, as well as some of its most noted constituents. With their exceptional knowledge of brands, products, companies and industries, the citizen marketers are democratizing traditional notions of communication and marketing, even entire business models.  Features: - Research on social media
- Case studies of people and organizations fueling the growth of citizen marketing
- Clarifies the context and importance of technological and societal shifts that are changing the nature of customer expectations and relationships
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| Publisher | Kaplan Business | | Release date | 12/2006 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $25 | | Our price | $16.5 (you save 34.00%) | | Used price | from $0.01 |
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 Some Interesting Tidbits, but Behind the Curve
As an web entrepreneur I'm always looking for new insights on how to harness the web and get people excited about sharing my stuff. I hoped Citizen Marketers would give me some new insights that I was looking for. Unfortunately, I didn't get much from it.
Perhaps the most interesting chapter to me was about the 1 Percenters. It's the idea that only 1 percent of your customers will go out of their way to market for you on their own free will. I've seen this principle in action myself.
What I really didn't like about this book is how behind the curve it is. Granted, it was published in 2007, but you'd think experts on Social Media would have some foresight on where the web was going and focus on that. For example, while it gushes about MySpace, there isn't one mention of Facebook even though Facebook back in 2007 was making ground on MySpace in the social network arean. Even though Twitter had been around since 2006, it didn't even get a blurb. They discuss Moveable type, but forget about Wordpress even though Wordpress is one of the, if not the most, popular blog platforms on the web.
So overall, a few interesting tid bits, but nothing groundbreaking.
 A changing of the guard amongst key influencers
In the not-so-distant past, if someone wants to have an impact on the culture at large; launch a new product or win an election their best (and virtually only) bet was engaging traditional print and broadcast media outlets. And whether you were trying to secure an advertising buy or editorial space you also had to deal with "gatekeepers" - those are the editors, producers and sales managers within the media. However, with the continuing rise of the Internet and its democratization of the communication chain - that old-media model is shrinking and eroding daily. Technology and business expert Ben McConnell looks at the juggernaut-like influence and power that has shifted from the old "gatekeepers" to a new class. This new breed of influence peddlers is what McConnell calls Citizen Marketers and it's the title of his book. He defines these individuals as a small group of young, computer savvy hipsters that align their Internet gravitas with any idea, product or brand that happens to fit their particular worldview that day. McConnell stresses that these individuals are influencers in the truest sense since that can quickly mobilize and lead others to action. Soundview highly recommends this book because the powerful phenomenon of citizen marketers will only grow and it can't be ignored.
 Stories without insights
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba have cobbled together a collection of stories showing how bloggers, social networkers, and other online denizens have a platform to spread criticim - and commendations - widely over the internet via blogs and videos. Examples include bloggers who are shedding critical light on Dell, Apple's iPod, McDonald's, NetFlix, Comcast, and others.
But so what? Is there a marketer left on the planet who doesn't know that customers have this power? This, alone, is not enough content for a book. At best, this might make a two-page article in "Duh!" magazine.
There are no insights. It doesn't explore important implications for marketers, like the best way to respond to online criticism, how to fire up customer evangelists, how to engage with the blogger community, how to measure the effectiveness of a company-sponsored online community, or any other practical advice other than "the world has changed, you need to change with it." Even their thin attempts at insights - categorizing citizen marketers into four categories - is just left dangling, with no follow through on how to use these categories to inform your marketing strategy.
This book copies the format of another marketing fake - Seth Godin - by delivering a series of stories but failing to boil out the insights. We need FEWER of these self-indulgent, lazy and intellectually flabby books.
 Good lessons for Old School Marketers, and New School Marketers, of course.
I'm a fan of these guys [Jackie Huba & Ben McConnel]. As most of you, I also met them with Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, I even bought the Discussion Guide and follow their Blog everyday.
The fact is that this book covers really great experiences of lots of industries. One of my favorites is placed in the Record Industry, I thinkg that if they'd wrote the book these days, RadioHead would be a great case for the book.
More interesting lessons come every chapter, and more than a "Handbook", it's a Review one. And it will definetly be a classic record of our new marketing era.
So... Old School Marketing guys... this could be a book that shows you that Marketing is not the same, since several years ago.
The Authority on New Marketing and Social Media
I can't believe this book came out at the end of 2006. I just read a brand new book on a similar subject which referenced a lot of the same examples. No wonder Ben and Jackie have quickly become the authority on social media and new marketing.
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