Secrets to Success Deborah Cole Micek and John-Paul Micek

‘Who’ is more important than ‘what’

To assume that the conditions of the online marketplace are the same as last year would be as silly as crossing the Rockies in January without checking the weather forecast.

Today's online marketplace is a new world thanks to the influence of new media and Web 2.0. This is a big problem for many marketers. They can be the best at what they do, but it doesn't work in the new environment.

Three years ago, a shift in the mainstream marketplace began like tiny waves lapping at the shoreline. Today, those changes are a tsunami sweeping across the business landscape.

This tidal wave of transformation is powered not so much by new media, but by the control that new media gives to the "man or woman on the street."

The reality of the marketplace is this: The average Joe and Jane grabbed their surf boards and are freely riding the waves of the new-media marketplace.

The ones sitting on the shoreline watching in fear are business owners, marketers, and sales professionals. Some do dive in, dog-paddling furiously, peddling their wares using new-media channels with old-school marketing tactics. But their videos, posts, podcasts, and entire Web presence flounder as the marketplace pummels them like a 40-foot wave.

There are only so many more days they can crawl back up on the beach of constrained thinking and return to poorly veiled versions of their old tactics. Soon the rising tide of consumer control will swamp the beach -- and their businesses.

How can you dive in to the new-media marketplace and not get swamped? Grasp this simple mindset: People buy who you are, not what you are selling.

There are three ways for you to start applying this:

» Find the influence leaders, in social networks, blogs, podcasts, and other venues. Observe who they are, what they do and how their fans respond.

» Start interacting to establish your online persona and brand.

» Build a true Web presence. Unlike a Web site that just sits there, a Web presence lives and works for you 24/7/365!

Add content to different new-media channels and each channel will work for you, bringing people from a targeted audience to you. Use individual channels like blogs, podcasts, online video and social networks, combining them on your own with list-building and conversion sites, or a complete integrated Web-presence builder like BLOG i360 New Media marketing system.

No matter which route you choose, remember: "Who is more important than what."