One of the wonders of the modern world which has been fuelled by the internet, is the amount of hugely valuable information that is freely available. It is possible to go to university or to learn a musical instrument, listen to music or watch TV, to learn languages or research cultures, to teach yourself how to use particular pieces of software or learn parenting skills, all from the comfort of your armchair. So entrenched is the model of freely available content, that Murdoch has seen online readership of the Times plummet by 90% since the Times has recently introduced a paid-for-content model. And we learnt at Boo! that Spotify’s business model is based on only 5% of their user base ever paying for content.
We are already seeing a shift in the sort of content that Recruitment Sites are offering, with added value content really helping to drive and support attraction campaigns, specifically the race to produce more and more content by the Future Talent market. I think the more intelligent recruitment models will shift to a more complex community based value-exchange model (Social Media Marketing is a step towards this) and we have already been talking about such approaches with two major Blue Chip clients. So this week’s mail is dedicated to freevertising – interesting examples of free-to-market distribution models.
Enjoy
OhMyGodWhatHappened is a book that was released last month, by a company called Innovative Thunder. The book can be purchased from Amazon, but if you want to download it for free, all you had to do was send a Tweet advertising the book. The distribution model makes sense (they are exchanging the value of their thought for the value of an individual’s network) and relies on what I often refer to in teaching courses as ‘reciprocity’ – the notion that if someone gives you something, they expect another thing back in return. It is classic human psychology. It will be interesting to see how much money they actually make, but its certainly done a lot of good for their Brand Awareness.
Swiftly following the release of OhMyGodWhatHappened was What Matters Now, a collection of thoughtpieces from recognised thinkers throughout the world, which was released by Seth Godin, a globally respected planner. The only difference here is that Seth doesn’t ask for money, only your network. For those who want to read it, it makes an interesting read.
On a slightly different tack, my sister-in-law recently attended the Social Media Measurement Camp. I had never heard of it, but looking into it, the camp is a global open-source movement to encourage knowledge sharing and industry collaboration towards answering ‘how do we measure engagement in social media?’. It has hubs in the UK, USA (Bay Area) and Ireland. Attendance costs nothing and the sessions are well attended. The content is managed and distributed via a wiki, so the entire business model is based on freevertising.
Particularly useful is the list of measurement tools. I receive about a zillion requests for these types of tools and this site has collated them into a useful, constantly updated source.
Finally, not necessarily free, but something that uses free content in an intelligent manner, Lab42 is a survey platform with the ability to dig through social networks to find your target consumers and enable them to give your company feedback. Low cost, broad in reach and highly customisable, it is a fantastic idea that makes market research much more accessible at significantly reduced costs in quick turnarounds. As with all these things, it will be interesting to see how long the business model remains viable, but I love the concept.