Bottom Dwellers of Social Media?

In the world of fishing there are fish called ” bottom dweller”. A bottom dweller is a fish that lives and feeds on the bottom of a body of water.   Typically they eat the debris of other fish and are not fit for human consumption.

Have Brands Become Bottom Dwellers?

Seth Godin writes: The digital world, even the high end brands, has become a sleazy carnival, complete with hawkers, barkers and a bearded lady. By the time someone actually gets to your site, they’ve been conned, popped up, popped under and upsold so many times they really have no choice but to be skeptical.

Basically, it’s a race to the bottom, with so many people spamming trackbacks, planning popups and scheming to trick the surfer with this or that that we’ve bullied people into a corner of believing no one.

Would you befriend someone or an organization that plays tricks on you and steals your time?  Not likely and the thinking behind such designs is considered anti-social and people get irritated and reject such attempts.

A time will come soon when the marketplace will operate differently. Where buyers will simply let the market know what they want and the market will have to come to them rather than buyers having to waste time and money trying to engage with bottom dwellers.  The intention of a buyer is to be served rather than sold. The intention of today’s sellers is to trick us into a transaction or capture us so they can continue to try and trick us over and over.

The purpose of media and technology will change the purpose of sellers. Seller ought to beware that buyers are aware of the old games and have been empowered to change the rules of the game. Our fishing expeditions will catch the marketplace off guard and leaders will win our loyalty by serving our purpose rather than theirs.

To think of social media as merely an extension of old marketing methods is to ignore the preferences of the market. To ignore the preferences of the buyer is the same as saying “we don’t care what buyers want”. Not caring is an attitude that will lose buyers attention…at the click of a mouse.

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