Free Money

Yesterday, the United States elected a new President and, from all accounts, he was one of the first to leverage the full power of the Internet to capture the votes needed.

The use of Internet social engineering is not new, but it is new for national election campaigns. Barack Obama's team created a means to raise money, far above the Federal funding, devised new means of communications to not only direct the volunteers, but also to motivate them and made certain everybody was speaking the same language.

Photography has been gently stepping into the social networking pool with blogs and Flickr (the Yahoo owned image posting site). There are some web sites using Twitter, a kind of group messaging service where anything up 140 words per individual Twitter can be shoved onto the Internet. Followers have the ability to see your Twitter entries in real time--almost as soon as they are sent. My news site, Photo News Today, uses Twitter to send notices of each entry, sometimes up to 50 or 60 per day (look at the top right of the main page where it says "Click Here to Follow Me..."). The people and companies following my entries, therefore, have the most up to date photographic industry news on their desktop, throughout the day.

I'm sure there are others doing the same, but where the industry misses this social networking phenomenon is with the manufacturers and distributors. There are few even offering a blog from either management or marketing. Updates to products, new products, and tips can be leveraged, at no real cost to these companies.

What they reap is attention. The more a product or brand is in front of a prospective customer's eyes, the better the odds the customer will purchase that brand.

Now, there are companies advertising on photographic blogs, for instance Strobist (David Hobby), but these are used as everyday ads, requiring the blog visitor to see and act upon the ad.

Let's look at the possibility of this in reverse. What if, and I'm just asking here; what if a major company, such as Canon used a blog to announce instances of Canon mentions on other blogs or even, heaven forbid, have someone in marketing Twitter these mentions everyday, throughout the day.

Here, a potential customer can subscribe to the Twitter service and follow Canon. As mention of Canon products reach the Internet, customers can click on the Twitter, go to the mentioned web site, and read about the products use in the field.

If word-of-mouth is one of the best advertising mediums, then think of how this approach could affect the bottom line. Low cost (employees time), high return.

One of the arguments I would expect to hear is the lack of audience. Yes, this is a new medium and if will take some time to mature. However, what better way to get the word out about new technologies, than by having it freely available on major company web sites.

This is just one of the emerging technologies currently available, there are others: Facebook, MySpace, instant messaging, and so forth.

I believe the time is ripe to start investigating and adopting these services, especially in the light of the dawn of the Obama Presidency. He has shown it works quite well.