A friend of mine has asked me to make a presentation for his sales staff. in order to keep my remarks brief, I found myself trying to jot down as few points as possible about how buying habits have changed.  What I came up with was a case to pay attention to twitter.

National consumer behaviors influence local buying habits and always have. The method of delivering marketing messages has undergone a fundamental change on both a national and local level.  In order to keep pace with your customers evolving buying habits let’s do a thumbnail review of how people are influenced to buy.

In the media age the masses were made aware of new products and services from a limited number of central sources. In the 1800′s that was print, mainly newspapers, magazines, and catalogs.

In the 1900′s mass marketing followed entertainment venues from print to broadcast. From radio to television to a slowly fading print media, the same processes of disseminating marketing messages through a limited number of central sources prevailed.

in the 21st century the distribution channel has blurred.  Print has continued to fade into the internet, motion pictures are being delivered as digital files, radio is available online and the music they play on iPod, and television is scattered over hundreds of cable channels and on the Internet.

The blurring of distribution channels has had an effect on the public that is reflected fairly well in the new ad campaign for Microsoft Bing.

Today people are influenced to buy differently. Instead of a small number of central distribution points for entertainment and information there are a large number of individualized sources. These include text messages, emails,  and posts to twitter, also known as tweets.

This message is hammered home again and again if you are listening.  Look at the recent protests in Iran. Hundreds of just plain folks risking their lives to text and send cell phone video images of the truth.

When Michael Jackson died there were hundreds of thousands of messages racing across twitter within minutes. Many people found out about this event from their friends via text and twitter and only then turned on their television sets to watch.   This is true despite the fact that most twenty – somethings are too young to care about the King of Pop. So who is doing all that tweeting? Everyone.

Related Story: U.S. State Department speaks to Twitter over Iran

Digital Body Language

I have been working on posting meaningful materials from the Online Marketing Summit in Atlanta, and  I hope you will find some benefit from the experiences I brought back from OMS Atlanta. I was among about 200 people in attendance and met some great folks.

Aaron Kahlow, Founder & CEO,  Online Marketing Summit & Institute kicked off the event with a great presentation. He gave a good background on the purpose of the event and great advice on how to get the most out of each session. I selected the advanced track and without exception the speakers were all well-informed and gave up-to-date information. Questions from the floor were also a great part of the event.

During the lunch break Steve Woods had a very interesting presentation on understanding online behavior. I was pleased to win a copy of the book Digital Body Language from Steve – and of course I did get him to sign it for me!

I guess the one session I enjoyed the most – and got the most out of was by Stacy Williams, President of Prominent Placement, an Atlanta based  Search marketing Company.  She provided my quote for the day – “For every $1 spent on search marketing you get $9 in return”

I’ll have more on each session on the Web Strategies Podcast – including some interviews. Soon.

What a great time as a guest on HearSay with Cathy Lewis yesterday!  The other guest – Ed Sykes of The Sykes Group, and Malcolm Venable of the Virginian-Pilot. Both great guys, and very well informed on various aspects of social media – or as Cathy likes to call it “The Facebook”

One of the topics we discussed was the public and private side of social networking – Cathy accepted my Friend Request – but instead of posting to her personal Facebook account I added a comment to the HearSay with Cathy Lewis fan area. If you listen to the show you’ll get the perspective – but essentially we were saying that sometimes the personal and the professional get unintentionally intermingled.

While knocking around last night I was watching a voice guy out west doing some tracks in real time. I think you will find this site worth a few minutes of your time to see how every niche – including yours – can benefit by understanding a little bit about social networking.