November 9th, 2009
You Googlin’ me
Nearly everyone is Googling, Tweeting, Facebooking, and Digging. Just about no one is talking.
By Roger Ewing
In Martin Scorsese’s 1976 classic movie Taxi Driver, a deranged Travis Bickle, portrayed by Robert De Niro, asks his own reflection this now famous question, “you talkin’ to me?”.
De Niro’s character is a troubled and conflicted New York City taxi driver who has isolated himself from society. His aloneness allows Bickles’ demons to get the better of him and he lashes out at the decadence he sees in the city. Travis Bickle is emblematic of the struggle we face in our modern lives. Anonymity has become the desired posture. And like Bickle, we have created cocoons of privacy around ourselves.
Problem: How do we develop new business relationships in an environment where our customers and clients are demanding more privacy and seclusion?
Nearly 85% of all my business transactions are the direct or indirect result of someone recommending me. Sound like a large number? Do some research into the specific sources of your successful business transactions and you will discover, as I have, that developing and maintaining relationships is probably the most important aspect of your business.
At the end of the day, we are all in the business of relationships.
In a rapidly expanding web based world, privacy has become a scarce commodity. Modern man seeks paparazzi free space. The development of filtering software, and mechanisms to ensure our separateness, has become big business. No one wants to hear from anyone they don’t already know and trust.
The irony is that your business enterprise, regardless of the category, is probably dependent upon the continued expansion of your sales base.
Solution: “Micro Community Blogs” that provide meaningful, quality information to people on a neighborhood level. I have found this to be a simple and effective marketing strategy that gives me permission from individuals in the community to communicate directly.
Information is the drug of choice in our modern civilization. In an effort to satisfy their desire for information, modern humans Google everything and everyone. If information is King, then Google is surely Emperor.
65% of all inquiries on the Internet begin with Google.
Lets put that in perspective. According to marketing research company comScore, in the United States alone, some 14.3 billion Internet searches were conducted in May 2009. comScore estimates there were 9.3 billion searches on Google for that month, representing an astounding 299.83 million Google searches per day!
Micro Community Blogging involves an Internet strategy that provides valuable information to individuals in their cocoon like sanctuaries. Reaching out to people, community by community, will prove to be the successful approach for enterprising marketers.
Here are the basic rules of engagement.
1. The information we share with the community must be in the first person.
2. This information must be relevant and topical on a neighborhood level.
3. Never sell anything in the Micro Community Blog.
Blogging is the preferred means of communicating in a village-like environment. Blogging has replaced the chatter we used to share with our neighbors and it has become a replacement for the party-line telephone that served as the internet in our parents ancient analog world.
You Googlin’ me? Hope so, because I already Googled you.
- Roger Ewing
Posted by Roger Ewing on November 9th, 2009
I attended our city council meeting last night (March 24th) along with approximately twenty five other Westlake Village homeowners to voice our solidarity against awarding a conditional use permit for T-Mobile to erect a 40 foot cellphone tower on the ridge line next to the Las Virgenes Water District building above the homes and Three Springs Park. Our city council conducted a professional meeting asking excellent questions and allowing the residents to be heard as they make this important decision.
I encourage everyone in Three Springs to watch the video of the council meeting that is on the City of Westlake website at http://www.wlv.org
This specific agenda item starts at approximately 1 hour, 23 minutes from the beginning of the council meeting. The awarding of that permit was put on a conditional hold until the council’s April 28th meeting because of both unanswered questions on this project and the lack of communications from our HOA (Homeowners Association) to both the city council and the residents of Three Springs.
I strongly recommend that you view the comments made by our city council (starting at approximately 3 hours, 11 minutes from the beginning of the meeting) that details a history of a “no response” pattern from our HOA to the city council on various subjects (i.e. cell tower, traffic). It is most disturbing that our homeowners association has left most of the residents of Three Springs in the dark with regards to notifying us of the potential issues (aesthetics and height issues as well as the reduction in property values) that the construction of a 40 foot cell phone tower could have in our beautiful neighborhood. We must insist that our Homeowners Association schedule a meeting with us as soon as possible (not at 7:00 am but rather in the evening so most of us can attend) to discuss this very important issue and that that our HOA board members attend the April 28th city council meeting. I am most interested in knowing:
1. When did our HOA know about this conditional permit for T-Mobile?
2. Why did our HOA not notify or disseminate this information to all the residents in the Three Spring neighborhood?
3. Why did our HOA not respond to our city council?
4. Why (as so well stated on the above link by one of our council members) was there an “empty chair here” with not one Three Springs board member attending last night’s council meeting?
Whatever your opinion, this is a “call to action” to all Three Spring neighborhood residents to get involved!