Gone are the days of Wall Street, Welcome Social Media Marketing
By: Brendan Fitzpatrick
That’s right. The days of Wall Street as most know it are gone, largely in part to the Bank Crisis and Federal bailouts in 2008 to most bigger Banks on Wall Street which led to one of the largest social uprisings known as Occupy Wall Street. Gone are the days of Investment banking, mortgages that were a dime a dozen, stocks and more thanks to the likes of Jordan Belfort as portrayed in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street‘. The rat race is evolving into a new form and Social Media Marketing may be it’s foundation.
Ever heard of a ‘Lifestyle Designer‘? Do you know what it’s like to maintain a Social Media presence? Here’s an idea. I won’t get into the technical details of how to have a successful Social Media presence but as you can see from the links, it’s an amazing concept but at the same time extremely difficult.. it’s becoming the next rat race! No longer does a company need to have it’s entire Operations near Wall Street, very similar to SEO – relevance is key to the success of a website, a sale, a job, a promotion and so on. Banks on Wall Street used to have their entire Operations very close to their sales – they needed to, the internet was shoddy at best in the 90’s and early 2000’s so it was very relevant or required to have an SA or Desktop Support person or Helpdesk resource to be in the same location. Nowadays just about everyone knows someone that works from home, or someone that can work ‘anywhere’ as long as they have an internet connection. The same applies to the technology teams at banks, the same for back office and front office Operations.. anyone who doesn’t deal with a Client face to face isn’t relevant to Wall Street, Banks are losing their Luster. Have you read an article recently on a surge stress related tragedy’s at the large Banks recently? Horrible, but the trends are only getting worse.. There is only so much water that you can extract from a fixed audience (or rock for that matter). There is a limit when dealing with funds in the general population. Have you read about the mortgage industry in the past 8 years or so? It has reached a limit and has swiftly been knocked down to reality through various government regulations.
What does this have to do with Social Media Marketing? SEO centric opportunities are light years ahead of Wall Street. In fact, the further away from Wall Street the chance are the more successful they will be. Remember I mentioned the concept of a ‘Lifestyle Designer’? when in history has someone been able to earn money while they sleep (without having someone work for them)?!?! When in history has a single individual been able to dominate a loan lending market?!?! Is it easy? Hell no! Probably alot harder than any Wall Street employee has ever had to work simply for the fact that SEO rules are a moving target that change every day and completely overhauled every few months – you have to be intensively analytical, extremely aggressive, motivated like a beast to make it to the top and indestructible to stay on top.. something of another cloth.
Companies every day are bought up by the likes of Facebook, Google and Yahoo for billions of dollars.. companies that haven’t even made a profit yet! are you kidding me? They are bought simply for a demographic audience! Who wants to put their money into a collection of holdings where each of those companies are moving away from Wall Street, or need to move their Operations to India to increase profit margins? Capitalism has built many companies and countries for that matter but there is a maximum profitability margin for a given product especially when there are many billion dollar competitors such as on Wall Street.. Are these companies at risk of catastropy? Did I mention the bailouts of 2008?
Surprisingly or not so surprisingly it seems that Social Media Marketing has lived a lifetime of Wall Street and we’re already seeing sways in the industry that cause demographic audiences to sway between products, the challenge being to be the first to obtain a large demographic audience and second to hold that demographic audience long term. Facebook has already shown it’s ups and downs and inability to retain a younger audience (they can Thank sites such as Instagram and SnapChat). Google has shown its vulnerabilities but ability to adapt.. oddly enough, Twitter and Linkedin proven stability over time.
In many ways Social Media Marketing is the Wall Street of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s but on steroids! SMM seems to follow the path of Wall Street as we know it but at much more rapid pace. Certainly a new area for growth and profitability, perhaps a new vehicle for extreme success? certainly a new vehicle for lot’s of profit regardless of profit history.. perhaps more instability? Who knows for sure, time will tell.
Are the days of Wall Street really over? I don’t know but my money is with Social Media Marketing for sure!