Thursday, March 08, 2007

Mark Ramsey Interviews Author Ben McConnell



"A citizen marketer is a person who creates content or media on behalf of a company or a brand, radio station, product, organization or even another person."

Ramsey: What do you say to a broadcaster who says all this is nice, but we have to make financial goals this quarter and not worry about stuff like this that could create a distraction in the short run?

McConnell: Well, I think you take small steps. Social media is a tsunami that is washing across the cultural landscape of everyone in America and across the world. Stations will either have to adjust their structures to insulate themselves against this social media onslaught and actually take action to become participants in it, otherwise the water will begin to slowly rust away the underpinning of the broadcaster's revenue model.

He calls today's emerging audience "the participation generation." Listen to the entire interview and get busy involving them in your station's content creation.

Ben McConnell is co-author of Creating Customer Evangelists, one of the books which kick-started the word-of-mouth marketing craze. He and his partner Jackie Huba have just penned a new book, Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message.

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