""A solid... insightful explanation of how the Internet has armed the consumer—which is to say, everyone—against the mindless blather of corporate messaging attempts. Drop everything and read this book.""—The Wall Street Journal The woman next to you in the coffee shop, typing madly on her laptop, just might be determining the ending to next year's block-buster film or how quickly the hottest new PDAT hits store shelves. In homes, dorm rooms, waiting rooms, planes and trains around the world, millions of people are exercising enormous influence on what we buy, even though they have no official connection to those products and services. Who are they? What motivates them? Marketing experts Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba explore the ramifications of social media in Citizen Marketers. As everyday people increasingly create content on behalf of companies, brands or products, they are collaborating with others just like themselves and forming ever-growing communities of enhusiasts and evangelists. From the rough to the sophisticated, the ""user-generated media"" of blogs, online bulletin boards, podcasts, photos, songs, and animations are influencing companies' customer relationships, product design, and marketing campaigns, whether they participate willingly or not. Citizen Marketers is the first book to document this phenomenon, examining some of the early winners and losers in this new genre, as well as some of its most noted constituents. With their exceptional knowledge of brands, products, companies and industries, the citizen marketers are democratizing traditional notions of communication and marketing, even entire business models. Features: Research on social media Case studies of people and organizations fueling the growth of citizen marketing Clarifies the context and importance of technological and societal shifts that are changing the nature of customer expectations and relationships

Particularly among segments of the left that have identified neoliberal market logics and consumer capitalist structures as a major focus of political struggle -- .

The woman next to you in the coffee shop, typing madly on her laptop, just might be determining the ending to next year's block-buster film or how quickly the hottest new PDA hits store shelves. In homes, dorm rooms, waiting rooms, planes and trains around the world, millions of people are exercising enormous influence on what we buy, even though they have no official connection to those products and services. Who are they? What motivates them? Marketing experts Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell explore the ramifications of social media in Citizen Marketers. As everyday people increasingly create content on behalf of companies, brands or products, they are collaborating with others just like themselves and forming ever-growing communities of enthusiasts and evangelists. From the rough to the sophisticated, the "user-generated media" of blogs, online bulletin boards, podcasts, photos, songs, and animations are influencing companies' customer relationships, product design, and marketing campaigns, whether they participate willingly or not.

Outlines strategic tools for enabling sales improvements, outlining the author's five-step program for effective "benchmarking" steps that encourage business executives to rely on data-driven decision making rather than instincts. 15,000 first printing.

"Knowing the tools of social media is a must for successful marketing these days, but the real promise of social media is the way it can teach us a whole new way of doing business. Humanize takes the principles underlying social media's growth and applies them to the way we lead and manage our organizations"--Back cover.

From hashtag activism to the flood of political memes on social media, the landscape of political communication is being transformed by the grassroots circulation of opinion on digital platforms and beyond. By exploring how everyday people assist in the promotion of political media messages to persuade their peers and shape the public mind, Joel Penney offers a new framework for understanding the phenomenon of viral political communication: the citizen marketer. Like the citizen consumer, the citizen marketer is guided by the logics of marketing practice, but, rather than being passive, actively circulates persuasive media to advance political interests. Such practices include using protest symbols in social media profile pictures, strategically tweeting links to news articles to raise awareness about select issues, sharing politically-charged internet memes and viral videos, and displaying mass-produced T-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers that promote a favored electoral candidate or cause. Citizens view their participation in such activities not only in terms of how it may shape or influence outcomes, but as a statement of their own identity. As the book argues, these practices signal an important shift in how political participation is conceptualized and performed in advanced capitalist democratic societies, as they casually inject political ideas into the everyday spaces and places of popular culture. While marketing is considered a dirty word in certain critical circles -- particularly among segments of the left that have identified neoliberal market logics and consumer capitalist structures as a major focus of political struggle -- some of these very critics have determined that the most effective way to push back against the forces of neoliberal capitalism is to co-opt its own marketing and advertising techniques to spread counter-hegemonic ideas to the public. Accordingly, this book argues that the citizen marketer approach to political action is much broader than any one ideological constituency or bloc. Rather, it is a means of promoting a wide range of political ideas, including those that are broadly critical of elite uses of marketing in consumer capitalist societies. The book includes an extensive historical treatment of citizen-level political promotion in modern democratic societies, connecting contemporary digital practices to both the 19th century tradition of mass political spectacle as well as more informal, culturally-situated forms of political expression that emerge from postwar countercultures. By investigating the logics and motivations behind the citizen marketer approach, as well as how it has developed in response to key social, cultural, and technological changes, Penney charts the evolution of activism in an age of mediatized politics, promotional culture, and viral circulation.

Why are word-of-mouth campaigns effective for some products, while failing for others? Which group of consumers should be the target of viral marketing efforts, and how can you turn word of mouth into buzz? Panos Mourdoukoutas and George J Siomkos provide the answers! The transformation of a desire for a product into an "epidemic" was, is and will always be the dream of each and every marketer. For some marketers this dream becomes reality. For others it remains simply a fantasy. "The Seven Principles of WOM and Buzz Marketing" offers the essential tools – seven simple steps – to launch an effective WOM and buzz campaign that helps products to cross the tipping point and to reach the mass market: Begin with the consumers Be innovative Target the right group Create the right message Find the right environment