Posts Tagged ‘long tail’
Who Are The Long Tail?
Influencers.
Chris Anderson’s Long Tail is a foundational theory for digital marketing. Perhaps you’ve heard the term and vaguely understand what The Long Tail means, but why is it important and how does it change marketing and business?
See where the dinosaur’s head is located? Those are the generic places online that capture a wide cross-section of audience: Facebook, Google, YouTube, eBay, etc. The tail refers to the more niche sites, for instance within social networking it may be bookworms who want recommendations by friends or cyberfriends they trust at Goodreads, so if you are in the publishing business, joining the conversation both at the head (e.g. Facebook — create a bookswap group) as well as a niche site like Goodreads means you are working both the folks who might have a more casual interest in your brand as well as the influencers who can catapult masses of people into your brand with a few lines in a post or comment.
Where do you find the long tail communities like Goodread? Mashable posted this great list of 350 social networks by interest, which is a good starting point. From there you may find people who blog on more specialized subjects. You’ll also find links to forums and other information in users’ profiles once you join the networks that are closely aligned to your brand.
Happy Hunting!
<image of the Long Tail for this post comes from Left Click, a NZ-based SEO and usability firm>
The United Federation of Media
Federated Media is an intriguing web 2.0 ‘advertising’ agency model. It caters to Technorati 100 content developers (aka authors) — popular sites like Boing Boing, Cool Tools, Destructoid and Mashable as well as blogs like Guy Kawasaki’s: How to Change the World; Stowe Boyd’s /Message; Fred Wilson’s A VC and Mike Arrington’s TechCrunch.
Yet the rumormill is wondering if John Batelle (founder of the Industry Standard and Wired) is, once again, in danger of premature solicitation. He’s building what many feel (including me) to be an institution far ahead of its time. It will be worth 100x more in a year because it’s not *just* monetizing blogs. He’s developing platforms for brands like American Express Open and teaching us all what the next advertising model will be (hint: page views and CPM don’t enter into the conversation, but monetizing the Long Tail sure does).
