Last reading week 10....

As this quarter starts to wrap up, our readings in "The New Rules of Marketing and PR," "Citizen Marketers," and "New Influences" must come to an end as well. These last few readings really summed up the quarter, talking about the importance of blogging and loyalty of content. I really enjoyed reading the conclusion of "Citizen Marketers" and the story of Lonelygirl15 on YouTube. It's unbelievable that this girl made up a character and so many people believed her; however I'm sure I would have too if watched her video. The point of telling this story is to make people understand that blogging is about loyalty and not deception. Organizations need to make an investment or sacrifice to strengthen a relationship with its customers, as stated by Fred Reichheld.
However, what's hard for me to understand is how can a customer trust what they read on the Internet? Realistically, I find it hard to read what's on the Internet without some skepticism. Television is the same way and I feel that it will always be hard to trust what's on the Internet. This is where loyalty really comes into play. Customers need to know that they can trust what the organization is about. If they find out something is fake they will be offended and the organization will lose it's credibility and the customer's trust. Therefore, organizations can develop relationship through social media but they need to be loyal and responsible.

Citizen marketers should the 1 percenters be paid? week 4

Citizen Marketers determines the 1 Percenters as hobbyists which are essentially people who have embraced the principle of the participatory Web. These people are the ones that have made social media outlets such as Digg, Flickr and YouTube a true success. According to "Citizen Marketers" hobbyists are called this because what they do is a hobby. In addition, these people say that blogging frees them from expectations of labor and deadlines. Although the book goes on to describe the pay if a hobbyist were considered an actual job I still think these hobbyists or 1 percenters should get paid some for what they do. I mean successful web sites like Wikipedia, are truly successful because of these people. I feel like they deserve more credit than just a pat on the back. I'm not saying it should be a job, but I think some sort of compensation would be beneficial. Plus, perhaps more people would become 1 percenters if they knew some sort of benefit was available. This in turn, would hopefully increase the amount of bloggers and social media in general. So what do you think? Am I completely out of line to say this? Personally, if I spent a lot of time blogging and found out that I actually made a certain web site extremely successful, don't hold it against me, but I would want something in return. If you spend a lot of time on something and put your heart into, I would assume you might want something in return as well. Like I said what does everyone else think?