Hey Friends

I'm doing some work on madialogan.com to develop more of a platform for everything that I do. Don't worry. I'm going to do what I do best, and that's share stuff I think you need to know. There are going to be posts for marketers, musicians, friends and more.

much love and gratitude, madia

Tweets

Talkin’ Bout

Tag Cloud

African American Interests Business Digital Marketing Education Employment Entertainment General Introspection marketing music Natural Hair Personal Finance Small Business social media strategy Technology Application

The Wedding or the Marriage

January 30, 2010 View Comments by madia

commitment

I still don’t think business gets it.  Let me be more specific.  I’m not sure that some businesses get the implementation of digital media.  They don’t understand the commitment.  Today I thought of an analogy that made so much sense I had to break my rule of not getting carried away with multiple blog posts in a day.  Since I’ve just enabled comments – this is a big move for me.  To the point.

The wedding and the marriage.

The way a lot of businesses are still interacting with digital media reminds me of the couple all excited about the wedding.  They plan.  They budget the resources to pay vendors, florists, caterers, venues, etc… and after all that, they have their day. After the day – things tend to get a little tough.  Hence the divorce rate.  I always think to myself, maybe instead of the fancy centerpieces they should have sprung for marital counseling or preparation for the journey.

In the same ways people tend to focus on the wedding and not sustaining the marriage, businesses overemphasize their foray into digital media.  Look at us we’re blogging, podcasting and tweeting.  What businesses lack is the core strategy and expectation that they will have to experiment and customize these tools to accomplish the goals they’ve set.  The idea that you’d be able to start a blog and instantly build a following, master the feedback process, and strike chords with every post is not naivete, but a bad expectation to have in the first place.  It is very much like having a marriage and believing that every day is going to be filled with rainbows and sunshine.

I’m sure you could have a big wedding that kicks off a 60 year marriage but if I had to choose I’d pick a smaller wedding and a huge 50 year anniversary party.

Businesses should celebrate their successes in digital media, not their decision to participate.  Manage leadership expectations appropriately and continue to test and perfect your approach to accomplish the goals you created.  In this case – it takes commitment to celebrate.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Brett-Vedas/100000697721782 Brett Vedas

    I like the analogy, but I'd take it even a step further. The average wedding runs ~21k-24k, varying a bit region-to-region. The average household income is ~46k. In short, many people allow emotions to overwhelm the 'purchase' but they fail to look at if the union is actually right for the couple.

    I would say the businesses are no different, if they don't know and understand their customers intimately before jumping into the deep end of digital media then they'll likely be headed for a rocky, if not failed, relationship. Chances are pretty good that when you see companies failing in this space its symptomatic of deeper problems that exist beneath the surface.

    People love to pull the trigger on the purchase, most aren't ready [and likely never will be] for the road ahead. Its kind of like the puppy syndrome.

blog comments powered by Disqus