RonAmok!

In September, your New Media Evangelist demonstrated how to calculate the ROI of New Media in: How do you divide by zero? In October, I posted Gary V’s thoughts in: Gary Vaynerchuk divides by zero. Today, we have David Meerman Scott’s thoughts on the subject.

The video contains my new favorite ROI question: “What is the ROI of putting on your pants this morning?” Can’t wait to hit a traditional with that one!

Folks, let’s be very clear about this. New Media is by far THE MOST MEASURABLE communications medium in the history of civilization.. Unfortunately, most companies refuse to:

1. do the necessary digging to gather the data
2. do the analysis to make sense out of it.

Tags: David Meerman Scott Gary Vaynerchuk New Media Evangelist Ron Ploof ROI Video Blip.tv hubspot.com

I love quoting from movies. Last night I was thinking about a scene from the movie Back to the Future.

EXT: HILL VALLEY TOWN CENTER (NIGHT)

Marty is stuck in 1955. He needs to get back to 1985 and the only way to do so is to funnel a lightning strike into the flux capacitor.

DOC BROWN: Don’t worry. As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely 88 miles per hour, the instance the lightning strikes the tower (beat) everything will be fine!

And THAT got me to thinking…

Isn’t this exactly what the advertising industry is offering us? Aren’t they just channeling Doc Brown:

AD INDUSTRY: Don’t worry. As long as you hit that customer with the advertisement at precisely the time that their eyeballs are fixated in that exact location, when the medium is open to the correct page  (beat) everything will be fine!

Old Media fires random messages at “eyeballs.” New Media presents relevant messages to “eyeballs that CARE.” The latter has a chance to be forwarded to others. The former will likely be sent to a landfill.

Tags:Back to the Future Marty McFly Doc Brown advertising eyeballs that care New Media Evangelist

As a member of the New Media community, sometimes I find myself tossed unwittingly into a real live case study. Yesterday marked one of those times.

At about 3:30 p.m., I noticed that Chris Brogan had asked the following question via Twitter:

“My strategy for 2009 involves pirate ships and goal-focused execution. What has this economy done for your 2009 plans?”

A few minutes later, I responded with:

“@chrisbrogan This economy has opened many opportunities for those who help companies become more efficient in speaking with their customers.”

That was it. I went back to answering my email when all of a sudden, my inbox was pummeled with new messages. This is what I saw:

For some reason, I was gaining new Twitter followers at an unprecedented rate, and I couldn’t figure out why — well, until I saw the following tweet from Chris come across my screen:

You know who is totally awesome? Author @ronploof. Saw him in Arizona last week. Really great guy, @ronploof.

And then it all became clear. Chris Brogan has 18K+ Twitter followers. He tweets about me and presto, I gain 49 new followers instantaneously.

Chris has the power to move the needle. People trust him. If he recommends someone or something, people listen. It’s the power of Social Media. It’s the power of influence. Is your company paying attention?

Tags: Chris Brogan Twitter Ron Ploof New Media Evangelist Influence Trust