One of the themes seen in Peter Kim’s “Social Media Predictions in 2009″ is a need for accurate ways to measure online marketing. 

For the book industry,  a publicist’s work is graded on how many reviews she gets, whether the coverage is from large hits or small, and whether there is a spike in the sales report following a major review. 

But because the web is so new in the book industry, many publicists don’t know what or who to go after. Which blogger review will ensure the most hits? How do I know whether a website is highly ranked or not? Is it worth my time to create an online video or give away review copies to bloggers? (Questions to cover in future posts!) But I believe that this is an antiquated form of thinking. We all know that web 1.0 saw the creation of many “brochure” websites where communication was one way. I find many similarities between these sites and traditional newspapers, radio, and tv. Web 2.0 introduced a form of communication that decentralized the news. Instead of a one-way communication or even a dialogue, web 2.0 created pockets of communities that chatter nonstop at each other.

I believe web 2.0 is like a big bucket of water (bear with me here…) A publicist’s job is to throw pebbles into the water to create waves that will in turn create more waves, perhaps influencing other people to throw in pebbles as well. Eventually, enough pebbles get thrown in that the water spills over. Perhaps instead of worrying how many hits a website gets, a publicist should believe that any mention in the world wide web will not only create a ripple, it will add to the final tipping point when the water flows over the rim of the bucket. Our job, in this social media driven world, isn’t to seek out ways to drive one-way forms of communication (reviews), our job is to encourage conversation by planting the seeds and to monitor and mold the chatter no matter where it comes from.

Thoughts? 

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Social Media in 2009 Series
Introduction
Part 1: Get Personal 
Part 2:  Quality Over Quantity
Part 3: A Need for Strategy
Part 4: Measurements
Conclusion