Friday, October 9, 2009

engagement trumps topic

Steve Hargadon makes a great point, that: topic or content is not as important as engagement or involvement in a social network site; spoken like a true marketer, or advertising executive, or circus barker. The idea always is to have the public pay the quarter and get them into the tent even if the dancing orangutan isn’t really dancing or an orangutan. And once you have a mass of people wandering around inside the tent, maybe they’ll figure out a way to make their own amusement.

That kind of reminds me of the practice range on Oakland Golf Course across the street from my childhood home. In the spring and summer, all the kids from the neighborhood played baseball on the range after school, and in the fall we played football. The groundskeepers would chase us away on a regular basis. Thinking about it, though – in Steve Hargadon terms - how foolish those golf course workers were. Because if they had only sold advertising and put up billboards for Rawlings gloves, Schwinn bicycles, Chunky and Snickers candy bars around the range, it wouldn’t have mattered if people shagged balls, played baseball or football, the golf course would have made money from whatever was played upon the grass.

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