Google Plus, Social Media, and the Future of Marketing (Yourself)

A couple days ago, Dave Coulier (he’s most famous for playing Joey Gladstone on Full House) did a short “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. I, being the child of the late 80’s & early 90’s that I am, of course gravitated towards it immediately. During the course of the Q&A, I find out that Dave sends out private, unique direct messages to everyone who follows him on Twitter.

I immediately followed him on Twitter, as it’s that kind of personal interaction I absolutely love from celebrities. It gives them a human side. Anyway, the next morning, sure enough, I received a DM from Dave thanking me for following him. He even mentioned that he has been to a specific comedy club quite a few times in my small city of 70,000 people. I immediately got a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. This guy, who’s got a career, a family, and almost 55,000 Twitter followers not only took the time to personally respond to me, but also took the extra second to see where I lived, put two and two together, and mentioned the local comedy club.

I immediately went to check and see if Dave had a Google+ profile and was surprised that he did not. So I suggested it to him on Twitter. Shortly thereafter, +Dave Coulier had a profile! I am far more likely to go see Dave’s stand-up comedy when he comes back this way again based on these recent events.

The great thing about Google+ is the real interaction you can have with your followers. Twitter can be a mess of @ replies. Facebook is usually just a place to promote yourself, and comments are sometimes hard to follow. The thread-like posts on G+ provide a place for real interaction with other people. Folks like +Jeri Ryan +Robert Llewellyn and +Penn Jillette all respond to comments on their posts. I mean, how cool is it when someone famous acknowledges you?

As another example of how awesome social networking is — Google+ in particular: I’ve been crowd-sourcing my new video card selection over the past month or so. I thought I was pretty sold on an nVidia card, but decided to take one more stab at it yesterday since I have a much larger following on G+ than I did last week . I also tweeted about it, and I had a small discussion with some friends over on Twitter. My opinion didn’t change much until I woke up this morning and saw that +Robert Hallock commented on my post. He’s a product manager at AMD, and he found the thread via my Twitter discussion. He suggested a card by AMD that performs better and fits my needs better. What really sold me on it, though, was the personal interaction. With hundreds of thousands of customers, he took the time late last night to come to me to promote his product, as well as the time this morning to respond to some other questions in the thread. That’s just awesome.

I really think people crave acknowledgement, and I think marketing is moving in that direction. People skip over ads on TV and block ads on websites, but it’s hard to ignore well-placed personal interaction. Whether you’re selling a product or — in the case of celebrities — yourself, personal interaction is the way to go.

It really has all come full circle. Years ago, you would go into a store and a salesperson would tell you all about a product (I used to be one of those people!) However, now when you go into a store, you can’t find anyone to help you. When you do find someone, the people there aren’t much more than glorified box-fetchers. You have to do your own research at home ahead of time. (And people wonder why brick & mortar stores are dying.) The Internet has given everyone the power to reach a potential audience of millions, and social media, especially Google+, has allowed you to do it for free.