Seth Godin and the concept of the Purple Cow

Lesson Details:

I: Introduction

A: Seo and social media marketing strategy

The purpose of this article is to outline the way that seo and social media marketing can be used to increase traffic to a website. To achieve this, it will look at the concept of the purple cow, which was first put forward by Seth Godin in his book Purple Cow. This article will also consider the development of social media marketing, including twitter, linkedin, stumbleupon and facebook.



II: Body

A: Seth Godin and the concept of the purple cow

Seth Godin published his book The Purple Cow in 2003. In this book he explains how people are becoming bored by the products that they see around them, including websites. He argues that this is because people are becoming immune to advertising, which means that they do not need to be advertised to as much as they did previously. However, if someone sees something that is different or unique they are more likely to pay attention. He gives an example of a purple cow which would stand out because of its colour and would therefore be more memorable than all of the other cows which are white. If people do not notice something like this they are unlikely to remember it. He goes on to explain how businesses should aim to become purple cows because this will increase their sales.



B: Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing involves a company using a social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or Stumbleupon to advertise their products or services. This is often done through the use of a profile or page which they have set up for themselves on these sites. In this way, they can talk to existing customers as well as potential ones. They can also use the site as a source of information as well as a place to sell their products or services. For example, a social media marketing campaign might involve a person creating a Facebook page for their company and then sharing information with customers about their products. This could be achieved by posting pictures of their products, giving information about new releases etc. They may also encourage people to ‘like’ their page or follow them on Twitter. This would mean that interested customers could learn about new releases and follow updates online.



C: Twitter

Twitter is a website where users can post messages of up to 140 characters. People can also choose whether or not they want to allow other people to retweet what they have posted. This means that someone who is following them will be able to read what they have posted even if they cannot see it directly on their own Twitter page. The first Twitter message was sent on March 21st 2006 and it became popular very quickly after that. In May 2008, during the presidential election in the USA, Barack Obama held a town hall on Twitter where he answered questions from users directly. This was the first time that a US president had ever done such a thing and it caused many people to start using Twitter as a result. Today there are over 100 million users around the world and around 50,000 companies have accounts on Twitter as well as individual people. It is estimated that there are over 2 billion searches every day on Twitter and over 90 million tweets per day.



D: LinkedIn

LinkedIn was created by Reid Hoffman and launched in 2003 and it has grown very rapidly since then and now has more than 160 million members worldwide. As of June 2011, LinkedIn had the third highest amount of traffic of any website in the world, with 589 million visits per month (after google and facebook). A LinkedIn account enables people to create a personal profile and connect with others who also use LinkedIn. They can do this by entering the email addresses of the contacts that they already have and then send invitations for these people to connect with them on LinkedIn. Once they have become connected via LinkedIn, they can share information about themselves including work history, education history etc.. They can also add professional details including their expertise or skills. They can then connect with other people who are listed in their network when they find common ground via groups or common interests. This enables them to stay in touch with friends, family members or colleagues in an easy way which would otherwise be quite time consuming.



E: Stumbleupon

Stumbleupon was established in 2001 and in 2011 it had over 60 million users worldwide. It was created by two computer programmers called Andrew Stroup and Garrett Camp who wanted to improve the way in which people found things online. They created stumbleupon because they believed that search engines were not doing enough to show people what else there was on the internet beyond what was being advertised by advertisers through pay per click campaigns. Their intention was to offer an alternative to the way in which users found content online at that time. When someone uses stumbleupon they are encouraged to visit other pages or websites which have been selected by other users for them based on their own preferences. These choices are made based on the tags which have been selected by other users when they post lists about specific topics. Tags are labels which describe things so that people who use stumbleupon can find them easily when they search for them within the site itself. Users can also tag pages themselves when they find interesting content online but they should try not to tag too much content because that makes it harder for other users to find the pages that were meant for them specifically.



F: Facebook

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world having over 750 million active users worldwide in early 2011 (only China had more users than Facebook at this point). The site was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg while he was studying at Harvard University and today it is owned by Facebook Inc., which employs more than 3,000 employees worldwide (as of July 2011). Users can create personal profiles, upload photos, play games etc.. These personal profiles are listed according to how close you are to each user (for example, ‘friends’ or ‘acquaintances’). When you join your friends list will show you what other friends you have in common so that you can start communicating with these people if you wish to do so (this list is referred to as your ‘friends list’). You can also restrict your profile so that only certain people can view it (for example ‘friends only’) or make it completely public so that anyone can access it (this option is known as ‘public’).