At The Cutting Edge
I think one of the greatest things about facebook is how quickly you can discover the people who are at the cutting edge and leading the way in the world of Web 2.0. You can instantly have access to their wisdom and experience through their profile, fan page and blogs and begin to develop a real relationship through the communication channels that are available.
The Aztec Warrior Queen
Yesterday I was accepted as a friend by Nancy Marmolejo, She came highly recommended from a number of my Facebook friends. I found a treasure trove of great information on Nancy's profile page and one of her blog posts inspired me to write this article
Women Leading The Way
In Nancy's Blog post she explores why Women Are Leading The Way in Social Marketing. She gives a number of reasons based on the obvious differences in approach.
Men tend to adopt an aggressive hard sell, pushy, combative way of relating to people whereas women are more prone to the softer sell, attraction marketing and passive ways of building relationships based on a real heartfelt desire to connect to people in a genuine way.
Masculine And Feminine Styles
Not that all men and all women fall into these two neat categories but rather there is a masculine way of doing things and a feminine way. Women who have had to fight to get to where they are now in the business world are having to unlearn the masculine habits and internet sales training that they previously adopted as they enter the new WEB 2.0 World of Social Marketing.
Flexibility Is The Key To Rapport
It doesn't matter what sex you are its your personality and style that make all the difference. Having the flexibility in your behaviour to be able to gain rapport with anyone regardless of gender or style of approach will mean you will have a much wider appeal.
Destructive Criticism
I saw a good example yesterday from a person who was commenting on a friends Video that I had shared on my profile. It was basically a very aggressive negative criticism from a woman who claims to be in Marketing. Obviously she has no clue about marketing herself as her bitterness and bitchiness left me wondering if I really want to have someone like this as a friend. It would have been easy for her to offer the same advice but to deliver it in a way that gives constructive criticism and support instead of such a negative putdown. I deleted the comment as its added no value to the conversation
Getting Noticed For The Wrong Reasons
Another pitfall that Nancy highlighted was the way some people don't think carefully enough about the first impressions that they are making. Aggressively marketing and promoting yourself can often damage your reputation and can be likened to a person entering a room where a party is taking place and talking to all the guests through a loudhailer. The noise is so loud that everyone in the room is disturbed. If you adopt this approach you will get noticed, but for all the wrong reasons.
Teleseminar Series
Erin Blaskie a female social marketer who specialises in virtual assistant services has put together a one month series of teleseminars and has rounded up an impressive line up of speakers. I saw a Tweet from Mari Smith pointing out the Demographics of that list. 29 are women and only 3 are men. That's quite a huge discrepancy. I don't think its because men weren't invited just that those that were chose not to participate.
A Heart Oriented Approach
It's clear that women have now found the platform where they don't have to become like men in order to succeed. As Web 2.0 spreads itself around the globe women will find themselves more at the forefront of this new media revolution. And the men that are successful will be the ones who adopt a softer more heart oriented approach.
The Tubby Nerd
Ed Dale is probably one of the few male internet marketing gurus who has truly understood social marketing and embraced it with a passion. He has an army of followers watching his every move on Facebook, Twitter and in his 30 day Challenge that will start in August. He says that many of his male peers in the internet marketing world hate facebook and other social networking sites. Most male marketers make the mistake of transferring their manipulative sales skills from direct response marketing and google adwords campaigns and fall flat on their faces when they try the same tactics within Social Media where conversation marketing and relationship building is what is actually required.
Demographic Differences
Ed points out that for sites like Facebook the demographics show that women outweigh men quite considerably. You can see this very easily if you ever check out Facebook's Social Adds, you can see the exact number of males and females in any country. I googled and discovered one facebook user who had taken the time to work out all the figures globally.
I did my own research as his figures were slightly out of date
In the USA there are 11.6 million men registered and 14.5 million women
In the UK the ratio is 4.5 million men to 5.5 million women
Women Are More Regular Users
In places like Ireland and China women make up 70% of the user base. The question also has to be asked of all those people who have registered for facebook what proportion are actually regular users. I suspect the true demographics are even higher when you view it this way as women use it much more to maintain their family and social relationships.
Statistical Analysis
What Ed does point out and I believe is very important is that those that are really successful in Internet Marketing and business are the ones that study statistics and test and track everything they do. Analysis is more of a male quality so while there might be many women who rise to become New Media Stars, based on their personality, The people who will actually make the most money in the nuts and bolts world of traffic and conversion will be the ones that can understand and translate the analytics reports and optimise their performance based on these results.
Important Details
The really smart marketers will be the ones that measure and quantify the qualitative aspects of social media. Knowing that the clothes you wear or the background colour of your YouTube video can affect your conversion rates and having hard data to back it up might make all the difference between success and mediocrity.
A Dating Guru
Eben Pagan, the guy who runs a $20 million dating advice company, spends a lot of his time going to conferences. His whole business revolves around understanding women and teaching men these secrets.
He told a story about one conference that he attended that was focussed on Marketing to Women and was surprised that he was one of the only men to show up. Why are so many men in the marketing world ignoring the fact that women control the purse strings and are the main driving force behind the global consumer economy?
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A lot of very valuable comments have been left about this post on facebook, I seem to have struck a chord with a lot of women and several men. You can view these extra comments here.
I also have a PDF report that I am giving away, You can pick up your Free copy by following either link.
Part 1 - How To Avoid Having Your Account Disabled - The Definitive Guide
Part 2 -How To Build A Targeted High Quality Friend List
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