Who’s Wagging The Long Tail?

6 July 2006 at 10:54 am | In Marketing, Small Business, Social Media, Web | No Comments

Chris Anderson who came up with the concept of the Long Tail has a new book out, “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More”, which was recently reviewed in the New Yorker.

Why is the theory of Long Tail potentially important for small businesses? Well here’s Chris’s summary:

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

The New Yorker’s review raises an interesting but flawed criticism of Chris’s thinking. It suggests that it is only the big online names like Amazon, Ebay, and iTunes that can ‘house the long tail’ i.e. the massive array of goods and services that cater for very particular customers, tastes and passions. They are therefore wagging the long tail. In control. An online oligopoly.

Of course, these big online brands are making a bundle of money, but what about search and word of mouth. I know very few people, for example, who browse iTunes looking for podcasts on a particular subject. It’s the online word-of-mouth network combined with Google et al that is the primary guide in this space. Large aggregators of Long Tail content may be the one stop out of town megastores, but it’s the growing interaction and sharing of online communities and networks that means the internet high street is thriving in its diversity.

Britain’s First Pub Blog

18 April 2006 at 12:23 am | In Blog, Small Business, Social Media | No Comments

Thanks to Paul Woodhouse, The Shooters Arms which overlooks Pendle in Lancashire appears to have become the first pub in Britain to start blogging.

The Tap Room is already shaping up to be a cosy, smoke-filled haven to enjoy jokes, strange stories and a virtual tipple or two. It certainly brings the place to life, even if you’re not a local and “if you don’t like it, you can always f**k off somewhere else,” to quote Dave Coffey, an icon of a pub landlord!

One of the great things about blogs is that they can capture the thoughts, stories and characters of a place like a pub. Blogs are the pubs of the website world. Places to congregate and share, places where you feel at home.

If, as I think Paul hopes, several of the regulars start contributing, it’ll become a phenomenal record and meeting place for regulars old and new for years to come. Imagine looking back on the blog in 5, 10 or 20 years time. All those stories, half-remembered in pub legend over the years, will be there to be enjoyed by generations to come.

I think sometimes people forget, you don’t have to be blogging to the world for a blog to be successful. Having said that, which pub will you make a point of visiting when you’re next up Pendle way?

Seven Days That Made The New World

10 April 2006 at 5:27 pm | In General, Social Media, Web | No Comments

Interesting leader in The Guardian today on the impact of broadband:

The rapid - albeit long-delayed - roll out of broadband is changing the face of commerce and entertainment, unleashing a wave of creative potential across the world. It is even possible to view the past seven days as the tipping point for a new era.

For small businesses, networks create opportunities. They always have done. If there is a new era, there’s an argument for saying that it’s the small guys who are going to benefit most.

Podcasting The Niche

10 April 2006 at 2:39 pm | In Marketing, Podcasting, Small Business, Social Media | No Comments

Charlene Li gives a sneak preview of the latest survey from Forrester Research on podcast listenership, a story that has been widely picked up by the media including the BBC today.

The 1% who regularly listen to podcasts in the US seems like a very small number. The 20% of US households who will regularly listen to podcasts by 2010 seems like a pretty big number. The message seems to be that despite the hype, those looking to reach mass audiences through podcasting will have to wait a while. That said, a survey by BMRB suggested recently that 8 million people in the UK will be regularly listening to podcasts by September this year.

The other interesting numbers game associated with podcasting is how to measure listenership. Once a podcast is downloaded it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s being listened to. It would be good to have data around the proportion of podcasts that are listened to after download. Measurability of podcasting doesn’t, however, seem any less or more robust than measurabiity of newspaper or magazine circulations against readership. How much of a newspaper does an individual read? How often do they throw a newspaper away
without reading it? How many newspapers included on circulation figures are left in piles unread at airports? Uncertainties in this market have never stopped advertisers advertising, until perhaps now when their attention is increasingly turned towards niche audiences.

What’s interested me about media coverage of podcasting, however, is that it’s become increasingly focused on numbers - Ricky Gervais’s success being the most obvious example - equating podcasts to the metrics of mass media itself ie the volume of listeners. But podcasting, in my view, is all about the niche, not the numbers.

While big numbers are important, if you’re planning a piece of mass marketing or want to advertise on a podcast network, they really miss the point that podcasting provides a fantastic opportunity to get niche content to highly focused groups or individuals.

Small Business Public Relations and Conversations

8 April 2006 at 2:02 pm | In Blog, Public Relations, Small Business, Social Media | No Comments

There are hundreds of blogs on public relations.  There are thousands of blogs on small business.  What there aren’t, in the UK at least, are very many blogs by small businesses.  Although consultancies and consultants have tended to pick up and run with this credibility building, window opening medium, there remain few blogs like the two most celebrated British small business blogs - The Tinbasher blog by Paul at Butler Sheet Metal and
the tailoring blog of English Cut.

Equally small business podcasts seem few and far between with the really rather wonderful Wiggly Wigglers, a Herefordshire based organic gardening products company, leading the way with style.  And I see that Heather at Wiggly Wigglers is now blogging too.

What’s all this leading to?  Well, this blog will be very much about small business, social media (like blogging and podcasting) and public relations.  Sometimes it will be about where these three meet, sometimes it will be practical, sometimes it will be tangential.

Small businesses above all know the value of word of mouth and referrals.  It’s how they live and breathe.  The rapidly becoming over-used Cluetrain aphorism, ‘markets are conversations’, was very much directed at corporations, but has a small business ethos at its heart.  If big business will only maintain success by becoming more like the small, then small is already the new big as Seth Godin has pointed out.

My hope is that by pointing to interesting examples and ideas, and adding a few of my own thoughts and a little analysis, I might just help inspire one or two more UK small businesses to start experimenting with some of the new communications tools that are changing the way we all interact online.